Your disability numbers don’t lie (and they’re pretty scary)

Where you live, if you use any disability services at all, is going to have a major impact on your life… and I haven’t seen this discussed much.

Of course given the nature of the Internet, there is a list The Best and Worst U.S. States for People With Disabilities

… but, really, your needs can vary widely (of course).

… and “Days of Sunshine” may not be a critical factor for you (or not… personally, “Days without Snow” has more of my attention!)

It started with Education

I think first I stumbled onto the US Department of Education Annual Report to Congress on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) back in 2017 or so and I was floored to discover that California had (and has) the most students in public school in a segregated setting (this is still true with 18.4% of disabled students spending 40% or less of their day with their general education peers – page 179 of the 2024 report).

And, it seems these numbers vary wildly within states as well (my current school district, Palo Alto Unified School District does much better than California as a whole while my previous school district, San Mateo-Foster City School District was, at that time, notably worse than the state average).

For most other metrics, I think, the state data is the key driver… or at least where data is available.

US Disability Metrics by State

The US Department of Labor is the main source for disability metrics (if anyone wants to help me dive into the American Commuunity Survey let me know), but there are two web sites that do a good job of consolidating the information.

Disability Statistics provides nice tools to allow you to query the data and pull together charts.

and the Center for Research on Disability’s Annual Disability Statistics Collection is very nice and powerful.

(both draw on the same data sets I think)

The Department of Labor has 6 disability categories: Visual Disability, Hearing Disability, Ambulatory Disability, Cognitive Disability, Self-Care Disability, and Independent Living Disability.

They collect workforce data – Poverty Rate, Employment Status, SSI (cruel surprise – if you live in Puerto Rico, you aren’t eligible for SSI… and, unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico has the highest disability poverty rate in the USWhy the US won’t let Puerto Rico Succeed), Income (individual, household), Educational Attainment…

Other Data Sources

There are other resources that may be relevant to people with different disabilities that require additional research such as:

People with IDD in the United States which reported that 61% of people with intellectual disabilities live with a related family member..

U.S. State Profile Data: Adults 18+ years of age

… from the CDC

And many others (I’ve been trying to get better data on Self-Determination)… and this is where I am so far Self-Direction for Home- and Community-Based Services

What Next?

The range of numbers that these datasets show is pretty astounding.

Poverty rates range between a low of 16.5% in Utah to 48.4% in Puerto Rico surprises like Oregon at 27.8%. California sits at dead last in Educational Attainment with 20.9% of our disabled population not graduating from high school with North Dakota leading with only 6.6% non-graduated disabled people and Colorado looks relatively good by a lot of metrics as does Massechusets.

We have a lot of family in California which makes staying here appealing, even if it isn’t great “by the numbers”.

For us, we have time.

But, as we get closer to retirement (and our disabled son moves towards adulthood)… I’m going to “do the math” on where we should consider living.

If we didn’t have family ties and other connections here and now – I think I’d be doing more homework on the quality of disability education in other states (and we did move locally to improve our schools several years ago).

Are you considering changing where you live due to disability services? (Now or in the future?)

What matters to you?

(Of course in California we also have straight up cost of living to consider!)

PS – of course a long term issue here in the US is national funding for disability services. Today, that funding comes under the umbrella of Medicaid which has been a target of the current administration… so how much are these programs at risk in your state – even if they are pretty good today?