Work exclusion and disability types: The heterogeneity of disability as social exclusion in the 2011 Irish Census microdata

Abstract

Work exclusion is often associated with lacking or having certain body functions and structures, that is, disabilities. There are various types of disabilities, including visual, hearing, physical, and intellectual. The focus of this paper is to examine whether different disability types concur with different likelihoods of work exclusion; this approach differs from that of current disability statistics, which, in effect, treat people with disabilities as a homogeneous group. The 2011 Irish Census microdata from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International database are used, since the data include information about disability types and have a sufficient sample size for the analysis of disabilities from type to type. Although all the included disability types significantly increase self-reported incapacity, logistic regression analysis of the data shows that the odds ratios with the adjustment of some sociodemographic variables widely differ from one another, which demonstrates the need for a type-sensitive approach to disability statistics.