Learning whether public policy is on the right track is particularly important at the current time because of the positive relationship between age and disability. As
the incidence of disabling health conditions rises with age (e.g., hearing impairments, arthritis, and limitations on activities due to heart disease) and as the large baby-boom generation has been entering the mid-to-late working years,
disability is likely to become increasingly common and, potentially, increasingly costly to society (e.g., increased utilization of medical and rehabilitative services as well as decreased receipt of income and payroll taxes from forgone individual earnings). In 1938, the Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Section 14 of the act established a reduced wage for the employment of individuals, under special certificates issued by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Administrator, whose earning capacity was impaired by age or physical or mental deficiency or injury. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA, P.L. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (CRA, P.L. 102-166 ) allows people bringing employment discrimination suits to seek compensatory and punitive damages under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 ( P.L. Toward the close of the decade, the Congress turned its attention to the supply side of the labor market in the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999. 106-170 is intended to encourage persons with severely limiting health conditions or impairments to increase their work effort by alleviating a dilemma of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries, namely, choosing between a job which may not have employer-provided health benefits and continuation of government-provided health care coverage through Medicare or Medicaid. The relatively recent implementation of these policies and programs makes it difficult to gauge how successful they have been at enhancing the employment prospects of persons with disabilities. The varying definitions of disability contained in programs and surveys compound the problem. Perhaps most importantly, so, too, does the lack of accurate statistics on individuals with disabilities derived from surveys that have asked consistent questions over time. 13078 recognized the data shortcomings related to the labor force status of persons with disabilities. It required the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities to design and implement
a statistically reliable and accurate method to measure the employment rate of adults with disabilities as soon as possible, but no later than the date of termination of the Task Force [30 days after submitting its final report on July 26, 2002, the 10 th anniversary of initial implementation of the ADA's employment provisions]. In an effort to mitigate the data limitations, researchers sometimes have taken the approach of utilizing multiple surveys to determine whether they are telling the same story. An alternative employment rate of people with disabilities who report they are willing and able to work shows statistically significant increases during the 1990s expansion. Policy analysts have examined other explanations for the comparatively poor labor market performance of the population with disabilities during the 1990s. The results of this research have prompted some to suggest that improvement in the employment outcomes of persons with disabilities might be attained by, on the demand side, subsidizing the cost of employer accommodations and by, on the supply side, assisting already employed persons with disabilities retain their current jobs, among other things.
Congress has enacted major legislation related to the employment of individuals with disabilities. In 1938, the Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which, among other provisions, established a reduced wage for the employment of individuals whose earning capacity was impaired by age or physical or mental deficiency or injury (Section 14). The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 banned discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere on the basis of disability, and the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1991 allowed people bringing employment discrimination suits to seek compensatory and punitive damages under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In 1999, Congress turned its attention to the supply side of the labor market in the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act by encouraging people with severely limiting health conditions or impairments to increase their work effort without loss of government-provided health care coverage.
Learning whether public policy is on the right track is especially important today because of the direct relationship between age and disability. As the incidence of disabling health conditions rises with age and as the large baby-boom generation has been entering middle-age, disability is likely to become increasingly common and (potentially) costly to society. Changing economic conditions and the varying definitions of disability in programs and surveys make it difficult to gauge the success of the legislation in enhancing the employment prospects of people with disabilities. So, too, does the lack of accurate, consistent statistics over time on the labor force status of individuals with disabilities. Despite the charge of the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities (1998-2002) to develop a valid, reliable measure of the employment rate of working-age adults with disabilities, progress toward that end has been very slow.
To mitigate the data shortcomings with regard to conducting trend analysis, researchers have utilized multiple databases to determine if they are telling the same story. In general, they are. Despite the strong state of the economy through 2000, full implementation of the ADA's employment provisions in the mid-1990s, and the employment rate of all working-age persons with disabilities failed to improve in recent decades. Analysts have examined a variety of explanations for the lagging employment opportunities of people with disabilities, including the seemingly increased share of adults with disabilities so severe that they report being unable to work; expansion of the Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income programs; and enactment and implementation of the ADA.
The results of this research have prompted some to suggest that enhancing the employment prospects of all members of the population with disabilities might involve subsidizing the cost of employer accommodations and helping those already employed retain their jobs, among other things. This report will be updated as warranted.