The Parents with Disabilities and Their Teens Project

Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)

The NHIS is conducted yearly by the National Center for Health Statistics, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is based on a scientific sample of approximately 40,000 families per year living in communities in every state. It does not include persons in institutions or active duty military personnel. Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) on parents with disabilities raising teens was extracted from the database and analyzed. The data reported here come from the NHIS 1998-2002.

What is the definition of disability used in the NHIS?

The NHIS asks if a respondent Q1 "Has a disability or chronic condition that limits..."
The NHIS also lists specific disabling impairments (e.g., insulin-dependent diabetes; inability to read newspaper print).
A respondent can answer Yes to Q1 and then not mark any specific disabling impairment. This gives one estimate of disability, which we call the Low Estimate.
A respondent may answer No to Q1, but mark a specific disabling impairment. Or the respondent may answer Yes to Q1 and also mark a specific disabling impairment. This gives a second estimate of disability, which we call the High Estimate.
Most of the statistics below give both a High and Low estimate.

How many parents with disabilities raising teens are there?

The low estimate is that there are 2.6 million parents with disabilities raising teens. The high estimate is 4.7 million parents with disabilities raising teens.
If we use the high estimate, this means that of all the parents of adolescents, 15% of them have a disability.
About 38% of these parents with disabilities are dads, and 62% are moms. This is not surprising, since women are more likely to have a disability than are men, and because there are more single mothers than single fathers.

How do these parents with disabilities compare to non-disabled parents raising teens?

AGE:

Parents with disabilities raising teens are slightly older than non-disabled parents raising teens (mean age of 43 versus 41, respectively).

ETHNICITY:

In general the race and ethnic identities of parents with disabilities raising teens is similar to that of non-disabled parents, though the percentage of African Americans is slightly higher among parents with disabilities than among non-disabled parents. There are slightly less Latino parents with disabilities, proportionately, than Latino non-disabled parents. This is especially true using the low estimate of disability.

LOCATION:

Both parents with and without disabilities live throughout the country, and are distributed geographically the same. Like non-disabled parents, more parents with disabilities are located in the South.

MARRIAGE:

Parents with disabilities are twice as likely as non-disabled parents to be single parents. About 75% of parents with disabilities were married, compared to 90% of non-disabled parents.

EDUCATION:

In general, parents with disabilities had less education than non-disabled parents. They were twice as likely not to have completed high school.

EMPLOYMENT:

The NHIS does not ask if the respondent has a job, but rather whether the respondent worked in the previous week. There are reasons other than unemployment that someone might not have worked in the previous week (e.g., illness, vacation). However, parents with disabilities were only half as likely to have worked in the previous week as were non-disabled parents. Between 32% and 46% of parents with disabilities worked the previous week, compared with 73% of non-disabled parents.

INCOME:

Given that parents with disabilities (a) are more likely to be single parents, (b) have less education, and (c) are less likely to be employed full time, we would expect these families to have lower incomes than the families of non-disabled parents. That is the case. About 25% of families with a disabled parent lived below the official poverty level for families of their size and geographic location, and were twice as likely to be below the poverty level than were families with non-disabled parents. They were also more likely than non-disabled parents to be covered by Medicare or Medicaid rather than private insurance.

Last modified: November 17 2004 17:46
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