DisabilityStatistics.org is a free source of disability-related statistics and estimates. You can use DisabilityStatistics.org to shape policy, make decisions, or request funding so that people with disabilities are more fully included in the workplace and community. Researchers and others who want to go beyond the data available here can use our Dataset Directory and Disability Data Source User Guides.

For more about the 2025 relaunch of this website, read DisabilityStatistics.org Offers Visualization and Local Data and Bill Erickson Has a Spreadsheet with 3.2 Million Rows.

DisabilityStatistics.org is published by the Northeast ADA Center, which is one of ten regional ADA Centers in the United States. The goal of the Northeast ADA Center is to educate and empower all ADA stakeholders throughout New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands to increase their knowledge of the ADA and to support them to include people with disabilities in local communities and to implement the ADA in their own lives, workplaces, businesses, and communities.

The Northeast ADA Center is housed in the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, which is part of the Cornell University ILR School. The Yang-Tan Institute works toward a world where people with disabilities are fully included in the workplace and community by advancing knowledge, policies, and practice that enhance equal opportunities for all people with disabilities.

The annual Disability Status Reports summarize the most recent demographic and economic statistics on the non-institutionalized US population with disabilities at the state and national level. They are aimed at policymakers, disability advocates, and reporters. The reports contain information on population size and disability prevalence for various demographic subpopulations, as well as statistics related to employment, earnings, and household income. Comparisons are made to people without disabilities and across disability types. Disability Status Reports are available for each state, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.

The reports focus primarily on the working-age population because the employment gap between people with and without disabilities is a major focus of government programs and advocacy efforts. Further, employment is a key factor in the social integration and economic self-sufficiency of working-age people with disabilities. In the future, we will add health-related statistics.

The estimates in the Disability Status Reports are based on analysis of the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). For additional disability-focused information in the ACS, see A Guide to Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (2008 Forward).

The annual Disability Status Reports are available for download from this site. On the home page, use the menus to choose a specific state, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or the entire United States. You can also choose a year dating back to 2008.

Note: There was no ACS data from 2020, so there is no corresponding annual report. See Where are the 2020 ACS estimates?

The Current Population Survey (CPS) began including the six ACS disability questions in 2008, but a work-limitation disability question has been in the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC) since 1981. Although it had issues (see below), the original CPS work-limitation question is the only annual disability measurement that spans the period before and after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This has allowed researchers to study the ADA’s impact on employment.

From 1981–2014, the CPS work-limitation disability question was:

“[d]oes anyone in this household have a health problem or disability which prevents them from working or which limits the kind or amount of work they can do? [If so,] who is that? (Anyone else?)”

In 2015, the wording of this question was changed to explicitly include short-term issues:

“At any time in [year] (did you/did anyone in the household) have a disability or health problem which prevented (you/them) from working, even for a short time, or which limited the work (you/they) could do?”

This change made estimates after 2014 no longer comparable to previous years.

The CPS work-limitation questions were designed as a lead-in to questions regarding sources of disability-related income. A criticism of these work-limitation questions is that they were not cognitively tested when they were developed, as was the case for most survey questions at that time.^[1] However, research published in 2002^[2] shows that time-trends in the employment of people with disabilities, as measured in the CPS with a work-limitation based definition, are not statistically different from time-trends in the employment of people with disabilities as measured in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) with a work-limitation-based definition or impairment-based definition to identify the population with disabilities.

More Info: For more about this issue and other issues relating to measuring employment outcomes of people with disabilities, see A User’s Guide to Current Statistics on the Employment of People with Disabilities (PDF).

References:

[1] Hale, T. W. (2001). The lack of a disability measure in today’s Current Population Survey. Monthly Labor Review, 124(6), 38.

[2] Burkhauser, R. V., Daly, M. C., Houtenville, A. J., & Nargis, N. (2002). Self-reported work limitation data: What they can and cannot tell us. Demography, 39(3), 541–555.

Where are the 2020 ACS estimates?

The Census Bureau did not release its standard ACS 1-year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data in 2020 because the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantially lower response rates and a non-response bias that could affect the accuracy of estimates. The 2020 ACS 1-year estimates did not meet the Census Bureau’s Statistical Data Quality Standards designed to ensure the utility, objectivity, and integrity of the statistical information.

For more information, see Census Bureau Announces Changes for 2020 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. Below are a few pertinent excerpts from this document:

The COVID-19 pandemic posed numerous challenges to collecting ACS data in 2020, as described in our recent Adapting the American Community Survey Amid COVID-19 blog. As a result, the ACS collected only two-thirds of the responses it usually collects in a survey year and the people who did respond to the survey had significantly different social, economic and housing characteristics from those who did not. This is called “nonresponse bias.”

Specifically, Census Bureau staff found high nonresponse from people with lower income, lower educational attainment, and who were less likely to own their home. Nonresponse bias is a natural part of sample surveys, and often statisticians can adjust for nonresponse bias by giving more weight to responses from underrepresented groups. However, Census Bureau staff found that standard nonresponse adjustments to the ACS 1-year estimates could not fully address the differences in a way that meets Census Bureau quality standards.

Because of the underlying quality concerns, the Census Bureau urges caution in using the experimental estimates as a replacement for standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates. Users should evaluate the estimates and alternatives to determine if they are suited for their needs. To create these estimates, the Census Bureau will apply an alternative set of weights to the 2020 ACS data to attempt to adjust for some of the nonresponse bias.

The American Community Survey (ACS) definition of employed person includes non-institutionalized persons 16 years old and over who either (1) were “at work,” that is, those who did any work at all during the reference week as paid employees, worked in their own business or profession, worked on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers on a family farm or in a family business; or (2) were “with a job but not at work,” that is, those who did not work during the reference week but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent due to illness, bad weather, industrial dispute, vacation, or other personal reasons.

Excluded from the employed are people whose only activity consisted of work around the house or unpaid volunteer work for religious, charitable, and similar organizations.

Source: American Community Survey and Puerto Rico Community Survey 2023 Subject Definitions (PDF)

The American Community Survey (ACS) definition of unemployed person includes non-institutionalized persons ages 16 years old and over if they: (1) were neither “at work” nor “with a job but not at work” during the reference week, and (2) were actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks, and (3) were available to start a job.

Also included as unemployed are civilians who did not work at all during the reference week, were waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been laid off, or were available for work except for temporary illness.

Examples of job seeking activities are:

• Registering at a public or private employment office
• Meeting with prospective employers
• Investigating possibilities for starting a professional practice or opening a business
• Placing or answering advertisements
• Writing letters of application
• Being on a union or professional register

Source: American Community Survey and Puerto Rico Community Survey 2023 Subject Definitions (PDF)

The Census Bureau makes many disability-related tables available on its Explore Census Data webpage.

You can also view and access all the Census Bureau ACS disability-related tables.

There are two basic options, depending on the population in the geography of interest:

• 1-Year Estimate Tables are the most timely and are available for areas with populations over 65,000 people.
• 5-Year Estimate Tables combine 5 years of sample to develop estimates for areas with smaller populations.

This website has two resources that provide information about disability data sources:

• Dataset Directory: Browse or search this database to find information on over 100 datasets and a dozen data repositories that include disability-related data. For each dataset, a profile provides information regarding the health conditions and disability measures collected, as well as the sample size and population included, study design, geographic coverage, data collection mode, and strengths and limitations. It also has links to the dataset’s primary website, documentation, selected papers, and reports.
• Disability Data Source User Guides: Read these guides to learn about key disability data sources. Each guide offers a detailed description of the dataset, including the historical background, sampling, strengths, limitations, and unique features. Each guide also has the definitions of disability used and illustrative tabulations generated from the data source.

You can also access these resources from the Dataset Tools menu in this website’s top navigation.

The estimate of 70 million persons with disabilities is based on the 2024 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) survey, as reported in the CDC media statement CDC Data Shows Over 70 Million U.S. Adults Reported Having a Disability. Meanwhile, estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS) suggest there are far fewer people with disabilities. The BRFSS uses the six ACS disability (ACS-6) questions with minor wording differences.

“Even when the disability questions are the same, as is the case with the ACS-6 and the BRFSS, the population estimate can vary considerably because of survey context, mode of administration, and potential sampling bias, particularly with telephone-based surveys.”^[1]

All these elements are different between the ACS and BRFSS surveys. Additionally, the BRFSS focuses almost exclusively on health issues. This focus may “prime” respondents to think about health issues, thereby increasing the likelihood of positive responses to the disability questions. The ACS questionnaire covers a much wider range of topics and does not have a health focus. A Statistics Canada study made a similar finding—disability prevalence was 2–3 times higher in health-focused surveys than in economic-focused surveys, despite using exactly the same set of disability screener questions.^[2]

References:

[1] Mitra, M., Long-Bellil, L., Moura, I., Miles, A., & Kaye, H.S. (2022). Advancing health equity and reducing health disparities for people with disabilities in the United States (PDF). Health Affairs, 41, 1379–1386.

[2] MacKenzie A. & Rietschlin J. (2005). Variation in disability rates in Statistics Canada national surveys: Building policy on a slippery foundation. Statistics Canada.