A detailed new report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds that almost half of people in poverty in the UK are disabled or live in a household with a disabled person.
The New Policy Institute report - Disability and Poverty - says that disabled people are more likely than non-disabled people to be disadvantaged in multiple aspects of life: these are problems in of themselves and also contributing factors to poverty.
The report recommends two approaches to reduce poverty among disabled people:
- maximise resources - this is partly about increasing employment, (such as the government’s ambition to halve the disability employment rate gap) and a focus on job retention rather than re-entry to work;
- reducing costs - high rates of material deprivation among disabled people suggest a failing of the social security system in mitigating these costs. In addition, the role of high housing costs in driving poverty for disabled people should be investigated, particularly for both private and social renters.