Disability and Poverty

Abstract

Disability is an umbrella term used to cover a wide range of physical conditions and social circumstances in which people may experience difficulties or problems in providing for themselves or participating in social activity. Of course loss or impairment of physical functions can be problematic: people who cannot see, hear, walk or clothe themselves obviously have to learn to adapt to their limited capabilities. However physical conditions such as these need not necessarily lead to social problems or social exclusion, and indeed they do not always do so. When assistance or support can be purchased or provided disabled people can and do participate fully in modern society. If they do not participate, and if they experience poverty and exclusion, it is because of their need to survive within structures that assume people are ‘able-bodied’ and that provide no support for those who are not — or may even directly exclude them. It is thus discrimination, rather than disability itself, which as the heart of the exclusion experienced by disabled people — and at the same time of their greater risk of poverty. For as Groves (1988, p. 171) put it, ‘Poverty is disability’s close companion’.