Comparative Analysis of Poverty in Families With a Disabled Child and Families With Non-Disabled Children in Poland in the Years 2014 and 2016

Abstract

The presence of a child with disabilities in a family presents more challenging conditions than the presence of a non-disabled child. One of the difficulties is of financial nature. One of the parents often has to give up their job to care for the child, which shrinks the household income. At the same time, the family has higher expenses resulting from, e.g. costs of treatment. All this increases the risk of falling into poverty. The goal of this paper is to analyse the financial situation of households with a disabled child, mainly in the context of poverty, and compare it to the financial situation of households with non-disabled children. The study is based on data from Polish Household Budget Survey, covering two years, 2014 and 2016. The study revealed that families with a disabled child are generally poorer than families with non-disabled children. The financial situation improved over the studied period in both types of families, but the improvement in the families with a disabled child was much greater. The main factor in reducing the risk of poverty in both types of families is the education attainment level of the reference person (the household head), which should be at least upper secondary.

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“…It is often the case that the expenses on the medications and supplementary classes or treatment supporting the child's development are higher than those borne by the parents of children without disabilities (Komorowska, 2017b). Often, one of the carers -most often the mother 7 -either gives up her professional activity entirely or limits it for the sake of caring for the child (Komorowska, 2017b;Komorowska et al, 2019). In the case of children with intellectual disability, many mothers leave the labour market for an extended period of time, sometimes permanently (Chou et al, 2018;Gomez Mandic et al, 2017;Komorowska & Kozłowski, 2021).…”

Socio-economic situation of disabled people in selected communes of Łodz voivodeship – presentation of study results

“…In turn, Michalska-Żyła and Starosta indicate that the quality of life in an objective approach, apart from material conditions, is also affected by such categories as health, education, economic activity, social bonds and social relations, the functioning of the state and the natural environment that have not been subjected to analysis in this publication due to the narrow scope of research. On the other hand, the analysis of the quality of life in a subjective dimension is associated with the assessment of the individual's satisfaction with life, which takes into account, above all, its intangible elements such as joy, satisfaction with life as a whole and its specific fields, as well as issues related to mental well-being and experienced emotional states (Michalska-Żyła and Starosta, 2016, p. 63) The issue of the socio-economic situation of the population is addressed quite extensively in the literature on the subject of quality of life in an objective sense (Komorowska, Kozłowski, and Słaby, 2019;Wyszkowska and Gotowska, 2013;Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2009;Grzega, 2012;Piasny, 1993, pp. 73-93) and in numerous studies and reports (cf.…”