Living conditions among people with disabilities in developing countries

Abstract

Living conditions and poverty are two common quantifiers or parameters of socioeconomic status and both have evolved from rather narrow economic and material concepts to encompass broader and more complex understandings.According to Heiberg and Øvensen (1993), studies on living conditions have evolved to include individuals' capabilities and how they utilise their capabilities. Likewise, the concept of poverty has expanded beyond a derived level of income or accumulation of material goods whereby 'poverty is now seen as the inability to achieve certain standards', poor people 'often lack adequate food, shelter, education, and health care', and 'they are poorly served by institutions of the state and society' (Wolfensohn and Bourguignon, 2004, p 4). The two concepts are not interchangeable, however; they stem from different research traditions and differ in use both for research and for practical purposes. While poverty research has focused on defining poverty and establishing poverty profiles, identifying poor populations and strategies for reducing poverty, studies on living conditions are based on more loosely bound sets of indicators that are applied to measure, for example, level of income, education, access to information, access to healthcare and social participation in a population, and to establish differences between population sub-groups for descriptive, comparative and monitoring purposes. Poverty is both a more general and complex phenomenon than living conditions, and the field of poverty research has recently been characterised as 'polyscopic', indicating that we are dealing with a multifaceted umbrella term and a conglomerate of perspectives and methods (Øyen, 2005). Surveys of living conditions in a population can, however, provide indicators on poverty and disability, and, if properly designed, they can be applied to study poverty mechanisms, poverty development and trends in a population, as well as contributing to decisions that may be applied to poverty alleviation. In this chapter data collected on the living conditions among people with and without disabilities in the southern African region will be utilised to assess the disability-poverty relationship.

Inclusive education policy provision in South African research universities

“…This impedes the ability to develop disability indicators (McLaren, Solarsh, and Saloojee 2003). Instruments used to measure disability in low and middle-income countries typically lack specificity (ability to correctly identify those without impairments) and/or sensitivity (ability to identify those with impairment) (Cartwright and Carvounis 2005;Eide et al 2011). According to the South African Census 2011, there is a national disability prevalence rate of 7.5%.…”

Socioeconomic inequalities in disability in Europe: contribution of behavioral, work-related and living conditions

“…Similar to previous studies in Europe, our results showed that living in adverse conditions 30 and being exposed to work-related risks 8 have an effect on behaviors; 23 which implies that they overlap 31 and it is through their interrelationship how they contribute to explain inequalities in many diseases and health problems, such as disability. 8,[32][33][34][35][36] What we add to the previous literature is quantitative estimates of the contribution of these risk factors to social inequalities in disability.…”

Income Disparity among Persons with Disabilities, Assessed by Education and Sex: Accentuated Gender Difference Found in Metro Manila, the Philippines

“…SINTEF has conducted surveys in eight Southern and East African countries, which were published as Eide et al. () and Eide and Jele (), among others. Eide et al.…”

“…Eide et al. () is a summary of studies on PWDs in Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Many of SINTEF's studies collect data on neighborhood households without disabled members (Loeb et al.…”

“…, p. 314; Eide and Jele , p. 60; Eide et al. , p. 57) and treat them as reference respondents to disabled counterparts. They let local PWDs participate in surveys as enumerators.…”