An analysis of the cost of disability across Europe using the standard of living approach

Abstract

This article presents for the first time a comparative study of the cost of disability for households in 31 European countries. In order to do so, we exploit the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, its special module on housing conditions for 2007 and 2012 and employ two alternative methodologies, one based on how difficult it is for households to make ends meet and the other related to the access of households to a set of services and assets. The comparative nature of the present analysis shows these national estimates of the cost disability from a broader perspective than previous research. One important finding of this study is that there is a significant diversity in the cost of disability across European countries, with Scandinavian countries at the top of the ranking and Eastern European states at the bottom. We discuss some possible explanatory reasons for the pattern of costs across countries found in our analysis.

The Costs of Disability in Turkey

“…There are some country case studies estimating the cost of disabled individuals in the household using the SoL approach, such as, 31 European countries (Anton et al 2016), Spain (Brana and Anton 2011), China (Loyalka et al (2014), Vietnam (Minh et al 2015), Cambodia , India (Raut et al 2014), North China (Xiaolin et al 2011). The common result of these studies is that there are significant additional costs to households with disabled individuals, and that the costs vary depending on the income level of households and the level of disability.…”

“…This study has been developed within the framework of the SoL approach proposed by Zaidi and Burchardt (2005) and Tibble (2005). This approach has also been widely adopted (such as Anton et al 2016;Braithwaite and Mont 2009;Brana and Anton 2011;Minh et al 2015). This method determines the impact of income and disability on welfare by calculating required income to compensate for the presence of disabled individuals in the household at a given level of welfare.…”

“It Is Too Much for Us”: Direct and Indirect Costs of Disability Amongst Working-Aged People with Disabilities in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Nairobi, Kenya

“…For example, studies have found people with disabilities are much less likely to be working, and earn lower salaries when they do work, compared to people without disabilities (Mitra 2018;United Nations 2019). Further, spending on direct disability-related costs as a proportion of household income have been estimated at 9-9.5% in Vietnam (Braithwaite and Mont 2009;Minh et al 2015), 14% in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Braithwaite and Mont 2009), 19% in Cambodia (Palmer, Williams, and McPake 2019), 8-43% in China (Loyalka et al 2014) and 16-155% across 31 European countries (Antón, Braña, and de Bustillo 2016). These estimates of direct costs only capture actual spending, not necessarily all spending required for full participation.…”

The direct cost of disability of community-dwelling older persons in Belgium

“…To our knowledge, there has been no large-scale study published on the cost of support of community-dwelling disabled older persons in Belgium. Moreover, most of the international studies were limited to the estimation of additional costs borne by disabled persons in comparison with nondisabled persons (Antón, Braña and de Bustillo, 2016;Hirsch and Hill, 2016;Morciano, Hancock and Pudney, 2015;Wilkinson-Meyers et al, 2010) or on specific diseases, such as dementia (Gerves, Chauvin and Bellanger, 2014;Gustavsson, Cattelin and Jonsson, 2011;Gustavsson et al, 2010;Jonsson et al, 2006;Jönsson and Wimo, 2009;Quentin et al, 2010;Schwarzkopf et al, 2011;Suh, Knapp and Kang, 2006;Taylor Jr et al, 2001;Wimo et al, 2011).…”