How Working age People with Disabilities Fared over the 1990s Business Cycle

Abstract

Using data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) we show that while the longest peacetime economic expansion in United States history has increased the economic well-being of most Americans, the majority of working age men and women with disabilities have been left behind. Robust economic growth since the recession of the early 1990s has lifted nearly all percentiles of the income distribution of working age men and men without disabilities beyond their previous business cycle peak levels of 1989. In contrast, the majority of working age men and women with disabilities did not share in economic growth over this period. Not only did their employment and labor earnings fall during the recession of the early 1990s but their employment and earnings continued to fall during the economic expansion that followed.