Costly differences:Living standards for working-age people with disabilities

Resolution Foundation

Costly differences: Living standards for working-age people with disabilities

Omar El Dessouky & Charlie McCurdy

The cost of living crisis has shone a harsh light on different groups’ ability to deal with fast- rising prices. In this briefing note, we focus on the living standards of people with disabilities, including results from a new survey of just under 8,000 working-age adults, over 2,000 of whom reported a long-term illness or disability, to offer insight into their experience of the current crisis.

We focus on people with disabilities for two good reasons. First, disability is on the rise in Britain. The share of the working-age population with a disability has risen from 17 to 23 per cent since 2013, a rise of over 2.6 million people. Second, people with disabilities are more vulnerable to rising costs of essentials because energy and food make up a greater share of their budgets, on average, than for the non-disabled, in part because of additional needs caused by underlying health problems.

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/costly-differences/

full study pdf: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2023/01/Costly-differences.pdf

 

We used to leave the sick and disabled behind. Now we just leave them around, because we don't move anymore.

If people understood how awful we treat the disabled, wow would they change their behavior: fewer injuries, better discipline, all the things the BPS models wants to happen, just doing it the wrong way. People would eat their veggies and exercise, although I doubt it would make nearly as much of a difference as is widely believed.

Fighting nature is always foolish. The idea that people will behave unnaturally and betting everything on an ideology that assumes so was always guaranteed to fail. All the BPS model did is free medicine from caring about any of this anymore, and gave society the green light to be as punitive and cruel about it, on account that it's supposed to be good for us.

 

Inflation is hurting me less than most people, since US disability benefits are tied to inflation, and wages are falling behind. However, that ignores the fact that I'm living on around 40% of the median salary in my country.