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There were 49.7 million people with some type of long-lasting condition or disability living in the United States in 2000. This represented 19.3 percent of the 257.2 million civilians aged 5 and over who were not living in prisons, nursing homes, and other institutions, or nearly one person in five.
Disability rates rose with age for both sexes, but significant differences existed between men and women. For people under 65, the prevalence of disability among men and boys was higher than among women and girls. In contrast, disability rates were higher for women than men aged 65 and older (43 percent for women, 40 percent for men).
According to the 2000 Census, people who indicated that they were White (and no other race) and were not of Hispanic or Latino origin had a low overall disability rate (18.3 percent vs 19.3 percent overall), despite the fact that their median age was higher than for other racial and ethnic groups.
Among the racial and ethnic groups examined, people who reported Black and people who reported American Indian and Alaska Native shared the highest overall estimated disability rate of 24.3 percent. Asians who reported only one race had the lowest overall disability rate: 16.6 percent. The overall disability rate for single-race Pacific Islanders (19.0 percent) was slightly higher than the rate for Asians, but not statistically different from the rates for non-Hispanic Whites. And even though people reporting two or more races had the lowest median age, their disability rates were among the highest in 2000 - 21.7 percent overall. The overall disability rate for Hispanics (20.9 percent) was also higher than the overall rate.
In 2000, 8.7 million people with disabilities were poor - a substantially higher proportion (17.6 percent) than was found among people without disabilities (10.6 percent). The highest poverty rates in both cases were found among children aged 5 to 15: young people with disabilities had a poverty rate of 25.0 percent, compared with 15.7 percent for those without disabilities.
Almost two out of every five people with a disability lived in the South, while about one in five lived in each of the other three regions of the US. West Virginia, the state with the highest median age in the United States, also recorded the highest disability rate for 2000, 24.4 percent. Alaska and Utah had the lowest rates, each at 14.9 percent. Counties with very high disability rates were clustered in the coal mining areas of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia.
The 1997 median earnings for people with no disability with $23,700, compared with $20,500 for those with a slight disability and $13,300 for those with a severe disability. Among people with disabilities who worked, 34 percent were limited in the amount or kind of work that they could do. One in five workers with a disability had difficulty remaining employed or finding a job.
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