Disability and the Labor Market in Latin America

A bimonthly web-zine of international disability news and views • Issue no. 9 July-August 2001

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Disability and the Labor Market in Latin America
By Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Department of Economics, ITAM (paper submitted to the annual conference of the Inter-American Development Bank, Chile, March 2001)

3. Results
In this section we will estimate the incidence of disability in some Latin American countries, and also the relationship between disability and the labor market, using various household surveys. As we said before, most household surveys do not identify the person as disabled, unless he is not employed. Therefore the analysis of the labor market cannot be done with these countries. Nevertheless, we will present in the first part of this section the incidence of disability on some of these countries to stress the need to have similar definitions and similar questionnaires in all countries to capture this variable. In the second part, we will analyze disability in Brazil, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the only countries for which we can link disability to the labor market.

3.1 Incidence of disability among the non-employed population
We will start this section, analyzing the incidence of disability in Latin America using household surveys for Panama, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras and Bolivia, countries for which it is impossible to identify a disabled person if he is employed. We will therefore estimate the incidence of disability for the non-employed population, stressing the fact that differences in the structure and quality of the questions may change the estimations considerably.

Montes (2001) found that percentages differ significantly for these countries, as shown in Tables 1 and 2. This is explained by the following:

The differences in meaning between the words "incapacitado" and "discapacitado" in Spanish, make it difficult to compare data across surveys.
The sentence construction for the specific question asked generates differences between surveys.
If the set of options to choose from in the answer is different across countries, independence of irrelevant alternatives is violated when comparing surveys. The surveys' labor module only considers the subset of those individuals that are participating in the labor force at the time of the survey. Due to the fact that women in general participate less than men, the labor module information makes us wrongly infer that disability incidence is lower in women.

Table 1 Reasons for Not Working - Share Reporting "incapacidad" of the population between 25-55 years of age who are not employed
Men
Panama 1999	12.17%
Peru 1997	3.54
Mexico 1996	15.06
Chile 1998	14.61
Women
Panama 1999	1.22%
Peru 1997	1.46
Mexico 1996	1.06
Chile 1998	3.52
Source: Montes, A. (2001), Social Information System SIS, Research Department, Inter American Development Bank, page 3.

Table 2 Share Reporting "yes, disabled" of the Population 25-55 Years of Age
Men
Argentina 1996	4.59%
Uruguay 1998	17.27%
Honduras 1999	16.83%
Costa Rica 1998	16.79%
Bolivia 1999	7.54%
Women
Argentina 1996	0.94%
Uruguay 1998	3.17%
Honduras 1999	1.38%
Costa Rica 1998	2.25%
Bolivia 1999	1.64%
Source: Montes, A. (2001), Social Information System SIS, Research Department, Inter American Development Bank, page 4.

3.2 Disability and the labor market
The household surveys from Brazil in 1981, Nicaragua in 1993 and Costa Rica in 1998 are the only ones where we can estimate the incidence of disability for the whole population. However, only in the Nicaraguan survey is possible to detect the specific physical disability the individual suffers from.

In Table 3 we can see again that the percentage of disabled people varies dramatically between these three countries.

Table 3 Disabled Population (Percentage of Total Population)
	Men	Women	Total
Brazil a	2.08	1.48	1.78%
Costa Rica b	5.70%	5.48	5.59%
Nicaragua c	11.86	12.97	12.42%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Although the incidence of disability may change between countries due to economic and institutional factors, the difference we find between Brazil, Nicaragua and Costa Rica is better explained when we observe the specific questions in each survey.

For Brazil, the survey asks the following:

Portuguese question	English translation
Qual a deficiência ou incapacidade que vôce tem?	What type of deficiency or incapacity do you have?
1. Cegueira	Blindness
2. Surdez	Deafness
3. Surdo-mudez	Deaf-muteness
4, Retardamento ou doença mental	Retardation or insanity
5. Falta de algum membro ou parte dele	Partial or total mutilation / amputation in any part of the body
6. Paralisia total ou das duas pernas	Total paralysis or paralysis of both legs
7. Paralisia de um lado (1 braço e/ou 1 perna)	Paralysis in one side of the body (1 arm or one leg)
8. Outro tipo de incapacidade ou paralisia	Other type of incapacity or paralysis

In Costa Rica the number of disabled people increases relatively, because in the survey the definition is broader, as we can see here:

Spanish question	English translation
¿Alguna persona de este hogar presenta una o varias deficiencias que le impidan o dificulten, permanentemente, realizar sus actividades cotidianas?	Does anybody in this household have one or several deficiencies that permanently prevent or make difficult for him/her to perform his/her daily activities?
1. Ceguera parcial o total	Total or partial blindness
2. Sordera parcial o total	Total or partial deafness
3. Parálisis cerebral o de extremidades	Arm, leg or brain paralysis
4. Amputación	Amputation
5. Retardo mental	Retardation
6. Trastorno mental	Mental unbalance
7. Otro	Other

Finally in Nicaragua, the survey's main question asks if the person has a disability, and then in the second question they inquire what specific problem does the person have. The possible answers to the question What type of disability do you have? are:

Type of disability	Categories
Hearing problem	Deaf Serious hearing problem Mild hearing loss
Speech problem	Mute Difficulty
Sight problem	Blind Blind in one eye Difficulty, no glasses Difficulty, glasses
Movement problem	Cannot walk-move alone Limited or no use of arm(s) Limited or no use of leg(s) Cannot move one side of the body Involuntary movements
Deformity	Loss of both legs/arms Loss of both or one arm Loss of both or one leg Loss of one leg and one arm Deformed head/face Deformed arms Deformed legs Deformed torso
Mental problem	Retarded Psychological trauma Insane
Attack or convulsions
Hearing and speech	Deaf-mute Mild hearing/speech loss
Various

The differences we can find in the questions and the design of the questionnaire are very important to explain the differences in the incidence of disability in the three countries. The definition of disability is very narrow in Brazil, extremely broad in Nicaragua and intermediate in Costa Rica.

The best example is how the three countries classify differently a person with sight problems. In Brazil the survey considers a person disabled only if he is totally blind, in Costa Rica the individual is disabled if he is totally or partially blind, but in Nicaragua a disabled person may be someone with myopia who uses glasses! Personally I would not be classified as disabled in Brazil but I definitely would be in Nicaragua. It is not surprising then, that the incidence of disability is rather high in Nicaragua and surprisingly low in Brazil.

For this paper's purposes, it is fortunate that we have these three types of surveys, because we can analyze how the relationship between disability and other variables change, when we have a very restricted or a very broad definition of disability.

The Nicaraguan survey is of course richer than the ones in Brazil and Costa Rica, because it includes more categories that, in a broad sense, make a person disabled. The survey is also flexible, since each researcher is able to select only the exact categories he would like to focus on. In this research however, we will consider disabled all those reported disabled in each country's survey.

3.2.1 Personal characteristics and disability
The following tables estimate the incidence of disability by personal characteristics, only for those between 15 and 55 years old, in order to get only the working-age population.

Table 4 Disabled Population as a Percentage of Age Group 15-55 Years Old
	Men	Women	Total
Brazil a	2.10	1.34	1.71%
Costa Rica b	5.01	4.80	4.90%
Nicaragua c	13.45	14.50	13.99%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Table 5 Percentage of Disabled Population by Age Group (Ages 15-55 Years Old)
	15-24 years	25-34	35-44	45 -55	Total
Brazil a	1.48	1.53	1.82	2.63	1.74%
Costa Rica b	2.82%	4.04	5.32	9.83	4.90%
Nicaragua c	6.90	9.46	19.22	39.11	13.99%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Table 6 Percentage of Disabled Population by Schooling (Ages 15-55 Years Old)
	Brazil a	Costa Rica b	Nicaragua c
No Schooling	4.43	24.71	19.30
Unfinished Primary / Elementary School	1.61	8.34	14.53
Finished Primary / Elementary School	1.22	4.24	12.86
Unfinished High School	0.79	3.05	9.13
Finished High School	0.49	2.97	10.10
Unfinished College	0.46	3.38	16.45
Missing data	0.47	3.85	-
Total	1.74%	4.90%	13.99%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Table 7 Percentage of Disabled Population, by Household Position (Ages 15-55 Years Old)
	Brazil a	Costa Rica b	Nicaragua c
Sons, Daughters and Spouse of Household Head	1.72	4.53	12.16
Household Head	1.48	5.71	20.41
Other Members	2.86	5.28	7.84
Total	1.74%	4.90%	13.99%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Table 8 Percentage of Disabled Population, by Marital Status (Ages 15-55 Years Old)
	Costa Rica a	Nicaragua b
Single	5.01	10.11
Married	4.46	14.96
Separated / Divorced	7.63	17.55
Widowed	11.16	34.27
Missing Data	3.64	-
Total	4.90%	13.99%
a. Costa Rica, 1998 b. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

The first and perhaps obvious result is that the probability of being disabled increases with age. The older the person, the greater the physical depreciation and also the greater the chances of having an accident, with the possibility of becoming disabled. We can see this phenomenon in all three countries, although it is clearer in Nicaragua than in Brazil. As mentioned before, since the definition of disability is wider in Nicaragua than in Costa Rica and Brazil, the percentage of disabled people between 45 and 55 years old is 39.1, 9.8 and 2.6, respectively.

The previous result affects also the incidence of disability by marital status. In Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where we can obtain this variable, widowhood and divorce are the categories that have more percentage of disabled people; of course these two categories are usually directly related to age.

Intuitively, we may think that there is a negative relationship between schooling and the incidence of disability. Not only the disabled population has fewer chances to attend school, but also with more education the potential jobs are less risky, in terms of accidents, than the jobs of the non-educated population, as Elwan (1999) pointed out. Table 6 shows that in general more schooling reduces the incidence of disability, although in Costa Rica and Nicaragua there is an increase in higher degrees.

Again, the differences between countries are due to their definition of disability. In Brazil the negative relationship between disability and schooling holds, since the definition of disability is strict. However in Nicaragua, where a person with glasses can be considered disabled, the incidence of disability increases again in secondary school. There are at least two explanations for this phenomenon. The first one is that the person who is at school has more chances to detect his need for glasses; the second explanation is that more education may affect the individual's sight, and therefore the need to use glasses.

The survey offers another way to relate education to disability. We separated households by their head's schooling, and we found that when the head of the household had a college degree or more, the likelihood of having a disabled member is lower, as we can see in Table 9. This is consistent with Elwan (1999), who also pointed out that the jobs for more educated people are less risky.

Table 9 Percentage of Families with Disabled Members by the Educational Level of the Head of the Household
Educational level of the head of the household	Brazil	Costa Rica	Nicaragua
College degree or more	3.00	9.43	34.24
Less than a college degree	7.83	18.98	44.65
Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

The differences in the definitions can explain also why in Brazil heads of the household have the lowest probability of being disabled, whereas in Nicaragua the head of the household is, by far, the one more prone to be disabled in the family. If in Brazil, according to the definition, a disabled person is really a person with important physical or mental constraints, it is less likely that this person could become a head of any household. The opposite occurs in Nicaragua.

Finally, there are no clear signs that disability affects more men than women, except perhaps in Brazil. One possible explanation is that men are in general more exposed to work accidents than women, and the wide definition in Nicaragua and Costa Rica cannot capture this effect properly.

3.2.2 Disability and the Labor Market
As we said before, a major cost of being disabled is having more trouble participating in every day activities. One of those activities is of course the participation in the labor market. We were able to analyze with these three countries aspects of the disabled population related to the labor market, especially labor force participation rates, wages, occupation and industry.

The following table shows that, as we expected, the participation rate of the disabled population is lower that the non-disabled population in Brazil and Costa Rica. However, the opposite is true for Nicaragua, as we somehow expected, according to Nicaragua's definition of disability.

Table 10 Labor Participation Rate and Disability Age Group 15-55 Years Old
	Brazil	Costa Rica	Nicaragua
Non-disabled	56.68	64.82	65.53
Disabled	63.14	31.74	52.84
Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

In Brazil, where those defined as disabled have really serious physical problems, the participation rate of the disabled population is less than half of the non-disabled people. As we said before, not only disabilities affect direct labor force participation, but also the disabled population has less education, which also lowers their participation rate.

As always when we analyze together these three countries, the effect on the variable changes from one country to the other. In Costa Rica, the disabled population's participation rate is still lower than the one for the non-disabled population, even if we have here a broader definition of disability than in Brazil. But in Nicaragua the disabled population has a higher participation rate than the non-disabled population.

What initially seems like a contradiction is possible in the Nicaraguan survey. Some disabled people, according to this survey, are in fact educated and physically able individuals who cannot afford being out of the labor force.

If we look at the average wages of disabled and non-disabled people who work in each country, we again have the same result as before. In Brazil, non-disabled people earn 45.8% more than the disabled. In Costa Rica the difference is only 11.5%, but in Nicaragua, again, disabled individuals earn 11.3% more than the rest.

Table 11 Average Nominal Wage for Employed Individuals, Age Group 15-55 Years of Age
	Brazil a	Costa Rica b	Nicaragua c
Non-disabled	24,223.80	90,454.8	992.25
Disabled	16,613.79	78,415.39	1104.24
a. Brazil, 1981, nominal wage in current Cruzeiros of survey year b. Costa Rica, 1998, nominal wage in current Colones of survey year c. Nicaragua, 1993, nominal wage in current Cordobas of survey year Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

The following tables show the industry and occupation the disabled population is engaged in when they are employed. As a reference, we show also the figures for the non-disabled population. As we can see, Agriculture and Services are the industries with relatively more disabled population in Brazil and Costa Rica. As we discussed before, there are less chances of a disabled person being offered a job in the formal market, mainly because the firm does not have incentives to invest in disable facilities. The main option for the disabled population is therefore to work on small, informal family units and Agriculture and Services usually offer these types of businesses. We suspect that many of these disabled individuals work in small family enterprises; however, we do not have further information to confirm this hypothesis.

As we may expect, in Brazil and Costa Rica there are relatively more non-disabled individuals as professionals, technicians, clerical workers and even non-agricultural workers, such as machine operators. It should not be a surprise that this phenomenon is not seen in Nicaragua. The percentage of professionals and technicians and non-agriculture workers in the Nicaraguan disabled population is higher than the percentage of such individuals in the non-disabled population.

Table 12 Population, by Branch of Economic Activity and Disability Ages 15-55 Year Old
	Brazil a		Costa Rica b
	Non- Disabled	Disabled	Non-Disabled	Disabled
Agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing	25.75	36.04	18.67%	19.19
Mining	0.67	0.48	0.14	14.2
Manufacturing	16.12	15.91	16.3	-
Electricity, gas and water services	0.80	0.54	1.04	1.05
Construction	8.58	9.91	6.31	6.42
Wholesale and retail; restaurants and hotels	12.91	11.41	19.53	16.54
Transportation, storage and communications	4.61	2.42	5.6	6.71
Financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate companies and company consulting services	2.69	1.26	5.66	4.62
Community, social and personal services	27.88	22.02	26.02	30.3
Missing Data	-	-	0.74	0.97
Total	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

Table 13 Population, by Occupation and Disability Ages 15-55 Year Old
	Brazil a		Costa Rica b		Nicaragua c
	Non-disabled	Disabled	Non-disabled	Disabled	Non-disabled	Disabled
Professionals and Technicians	7.70	3.80	12.52	9.57	16.85	20.76
Managerial	0.50	0.72	3.76	2.23	2.40	1.62
Clerical and Administrative Support	10.59	5.47	9.02	8.53	3.19	2.71
Merchants and Salespersons	9.63	9.04	12.36	11.2	10.53	15.73
Service workers	26.99	28.78	15.1	18.79	13.03	12.90
Agricultural workers and alike	25.60	35.80	17.09	18.91	31.89	22.66
Non-agricultural workers, machine, vehicle and similar operators	15.80	13.80	29.35	29.97	21.72	23.34
Armed forces	1.12	0.32	-	-	-	-
Other Occupations, not listed above	2.06	2.27	0.66	0.78	-	-
Missing data	0.01	-	0.13	0.00	0.38	0.28
Total	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00
a. Brazil, 1981 b. Costa Rica, 1998 c. Nicaragua, 1993 Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

3.2.3 Labor economic costs of disabilities
Both the theoretical models and the data showed that disabilities change the individuals' participation rate, the expected wage and the type of job the person is able to get. If we take disabled individuals with severe physical problems, such as in Brazil and Costa Rica, they participate less in the labor market than the non-disabled population, and they tend to be concentrated in occupations and industries with low entry barriers.

However, disabilities change other aspects of the labor market. In the household context, a person with a disability changes the dynamics of the whole family, as we mentioned in the theoretical section. Usually a member of the family with physical problems, make other family members spend more time to take care of him. This effect reduces their participation rate. Nevertheless, a disabled person who is not able to work reduces the family's potential overall income, forcing the other members to work more. This effect increases therefore the other members' participation rate. The net effect will depend on the person's working potential.

As a first result, we estimated that families without disabled members participate more in the labor force than families with at least one disabled member, except of course in Nicaragua, as we can see in the next table, where there is no age limit.

Table 14 Labor Participation Rate of the Household, By Number of Members with Disabilities
	Brazil	Costa Rica	Nicaragua
Families with at least one disabled member	36.50	37.49	33.43
Families without disabled members	39.91	42.00	30.79
Source: Social Information System SIS, Inter-American Development Bank.

This is explained, as we said before, because the disabled individual has less chances of participating in the labor force in Brazil and Costa Rica, according to each country's surveys. But it is also true that for certain cases, a disabled person reduces also the participation rate of the rest of the members, as they will have to take care of him. A final explanation is that there is usually more education in the household without disabled members, and therefore the members' opportunity cost of not working is high.

If we concentrate only on families with at least one disabled member, we can see that in fact the household's labor dynamics change according to the person who suffers the physical problem. If the head of the household is disabled, his occupational status has a high impact on the participation rate of the rest of the family. In Brazil, when the disabled head of the household is in the labor force, 32.44% of the other members participate in the labor force. However, if the disabled head of the household does not work, the other members' participation rate is 38.20%

If the disabled person is not the head of the household, the other members' participation rates behave differently. Their participation rate is 46.89% if the disabled member works, and it is 40.90% if he does not. Therefore if there is a disabled member in the family, the participation rate of the rest of the family is very different if he is the head of the household.

If the disabled member is the head or the household and cannot work, the income effect is rather high for the family and the rest of the members have to work more, instead of taking care of him. On the other hand, a disabled non-head of household has a lower income potential, and therefore if he cannot work, the rest of the family reduces their participation rate, probably in order to take care of him.

For Costa Rica, we can also see that the participation rate of the family members is higher when the disabled head of the household does not work than when he is in the labor force (38.34% and 31.80%, respectively). However, there are practically no differences in the participation rate of other family members if the non-head disabled member is or not in the labor force (41.22% and 41.60%, respectively). In this case, we cannot observe that the family member with physical problems forces the other members to stay at home.

We have seen that the disabled person can participate less in the labor force in Brazil and Costa Rica. It is also true in Brazil, that the participation rate of some family members is also reduced when a disabled member does not work. Therefore, disabilities impose an economic cost in the society because of the forgone earnings.

Since at this point we cannot estimate properly the wages the non-employed disabled population would receive if they worked, we will try to estimate roughly these figures with the data we have so far. In Brazil, if we force the disabled population's participation rate to be equal to the non-disabled population, the forgone earnings would be approximately 0.6% of the actual (1981) total labor income in the country. For Costa Rica, this figure is 0.9% for 1998. If we also include in Brazil the forgone earnings of the members who do not work because they take care of a disabled member, we need to add another 0.8% of the observed total income.

Strictly speaking, the labor costs for the family, and for the economy as a whole, when there is a disabled member in the household, are not only the forgone earnings of the disabled member and the caregivers. They should include also the fact that some family members reduce their time in non-market activities (education, child-care, or even ballroom dancing!) when the one with a serious physical problem is the head of the household. Although it is extremely important to take into account these costs, it is not easy to give them a monetary value with the data available.

4. A promising future: conclusions and recommendations
Despite the discouraging start, in terms of the information and the definition of disability in Latin America, we think that at the end of this paper we were able to understand a little bit more how the disabled population behaves in the labor market. Due to the fact that there is not a common or official definition of disability in the region, the results we have of cross-country comparisons can be rather confusing and thus it is not possible, so far, to have common policies for the whole Latin American region.

The main findings of the paper are these:

We found a lack of interest in Latin American countries in the issue of disability, at least in quantitative terms. Even though some countries in the region are proud of their economic surveys, very few countries have dealt specifically with getting enough information about their disabled population and their relationship with other social and economic variables.
In the surveys where this issue is analyzed, the lack of an official definition makes the comparison between countries very difficult. In many surveys the independence of irrelevant alternatives is violated and therefore the estimated disabled population changes from country to country. Even in countries such as Nicaragua, where the disability module was very extensive and complete, a need of warning should be placed when analyzing this data, because some of their disability categories are far from what we usually have in mind of a disabled person.
The incidence of disability changes according to age, schooling and position in the household. As expected, disability increases with age, and decreases with schooling (the causality may be the other way around). For Brazil, there are few chances of the head of the household being disabled, but the opposite is true in Nicaragua.
As expected, the labor force participation is lower for those physically disabled than for the rest of the population. In Nicaragua this result does not hold.
Agriculture and Services favor the presence of the disabled population when they are working. This may be because the percentage of informal vacancies is relatively high in these industries, and therefore there are fewer barriers to hire a disabled worker.
There are at least three types of labor costs related to disability. The first one is the fact that the disabled population can participate less in the labor market. The second one is that, under some circumstances, a family member must take care of the disabled person, and therefore his participation rate is also low. Finally, in some families when the head of the household is disabled and cannot work, other members must enter the labor force, and therefore their time in other activities is lower than they would have wanted to.
Estimating the forgone earnings of the disabled population without controlling for a possible sample selection bias, we obtained that there would be 0.6% and 0.9% more earnings in Brazil and Costa Rica respectively, if the disabled population had a similar participation rate than the non-disabled population.
The definition of disability in Nicaragua is so broad (it includes people using glasses), that most of the usual and expected results do not hold for this country. For example, the participation rate of the disabled population is greater than one for the non-disabled individuals. An extension of this paper is perhaps to analyze the effect of the different categories for disability on the labor market. However, this implies that there would be not enough observations for some categories in the 1993 survey.

What are our recommendations in this paper with the information we obtained? The main recommendations are not about policies, but about future research.

We of course recommend having strong policies dealing with the discrimination problem in the labor market, which lowers the disabled population's chances of having a well-paid job. We recommend as well that the economic help for the disabled individual should be used to get aid and not only income transfers. The first one increases the individual's participation rate whereas the other one inhibits working.

Finally, in terms of policies, our recommendation is to ease the entry into the formal market for the whole population in Latin America. The formal market is usually linked to formal pensions, and since an important number of disabilities arise because of accidents and illness , the disabled person would be better off having this formal help.

Our main recommendation is to have more resources to understand and measure the disabled population in Latin America. This is a first and very important step forward; the sound policies can come before that (or at the same time). The IADB has done a good effort this year in trying to analyze this problem with very scarce information. The next step is to direct more resources in two areas.

The first one is to have a common definition of disability for Latin America. This might be complicated initially, because of the fuzzy boundaries of the concept. But if we already have a more or less good definition of unemployment (using as a parameter the International Labor Organization's definition), which is also a concept with flexible boundaries, we think it will be a good and fruitful effort to have our definition of disability.

The second recommendation is to carry on more disability modules in some Latin American countries, especially in those already having well structured and frequent household surveys. As it was done in Brazil, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the disability module can be inserted along with the labor module in the survey and, with a common definition, we can analyze disabilities and their relationship with other labor variables.

If this were the case, we would be able to answer the following questions, which are very important, if we would like to have better policies for the disabled population: What's the origin and nature of the disability? Who takes care of the disabled person and how? What activities can the disabled person do? What type of need does the disabled person require to be able to enter the labor market? Does he require special aids and /or training? Has he been rejected from a work place?

If we are able to allocate resources to these research activities we will be able to understand in some degree the problem the disabled population faces and thus we will be able to have better policies to give us a hand. These policies may help to have a promising future for the disabled population, not only in economic terms, but also in the fulfillment of their aspirations, which usually cannot be measured with the common economic tools.

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