Book Announcement: Decline of Employment of Disabled Americans

The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities, a Policy Puzzle. Edited by David C. Stapleton and Richard V. Burkhauser. Published by Cornell University.

A Policy Puzzle, edited by David C. Stapleton and Richard V. Burkhauser. The release states that though researchers agree that the employment rate for working-aged people with disabilities declined during the 1990s, they don't agree on the main cause for this decline. Some cite the increasing severity of disabilities while others argue that the easing of eligibility standards and increases in the relative benefits of Social Security disability programs (SSI and SSDI) are to blame. Still others argue that the passage and implementation of the ADA offers a rationale for the decline. A new book from the W.E. Upjohn Institute swings open the doors on this debate. It presents the latest research on the employment woes of the working-aged population with disabilities in a way that is accessible not only to researchers, but to policymakers, advocacy groups, and grass-roots disability communities.

The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities: a Policy Puzzle begins with a documentation of the employment rate decline and ends by spelling out the implications of this decline for public policy. However, the bulk of the book provides a detailed examination of the various explanations for the puzzling decline in employment among the working-aged population with disabilities. As the editors state in their introductory chapter,

"Given the robust economic expansion of the 1990s and the promise of greater independence that is embodied in the ADA, this decline in both employment and its importance for household income might reasonably be considered a disaster for the working-aged population with disabilities. Hence, it is not surprising that this decline in measured employment has generated a major debate, represented in this book, over the quality of the numbers produced by current data sets and, if credible, the causes for this unprecedented decline."

The book is an outgrowth of a conference organized by Cornell University's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for Economic Research on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Included are:

• Introduction, Richard V. Burkhauser and David C. Stapleton
• A User's Guide to Current Statistics on the Employment of People with Disabilities, Richard V. Burkhauser, Andrew J. Houtenville, and David C. Wittenburg
• Employment Declines among People with Disabilities: Population Movements, Isolated Experience, or Broad Policy Concern?, Andrew J. Houtenville and Mary C. Daly
• Have Changes in the Nature of Work or the Labor Market Reduced Employment Prospects of Workers with Disabilities?, David C. Stapleton, Nanette Goodman, and Andrew J. Houtenville
• Rising Health Care Expenditures and the Employment of People with High-Cost, Chronic Conditions, Steven C. Hill, Gina A. Livermore, and Andrew J. Houtenville
• Employment and the Changing Disability Population, H. Stephen Kaye
• The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Employment of People with Disabilities, Thomas DeLeire
• Does the Definition Affect the Outcome? Employment Trends Under Alternative Measures of Disability, Douglas Kruse and Lisa Schur
• Is It Time to Declare the ADA a Failed Law?, Peter D. Blanck, Susan Schwochau, and Chen Song
• The Role of Disability Insurance in Explaining the Recent Decline in the Employment Rate of People with Disabilities, Nanette Goodman and Timothy Waidmann
• A Review of the Evidence and Its Implications for Policy Change, Richard V. Burkhauser and David C. Stapleton.

The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities: A Policy Puzzle , David C. Stapleton and Richard V. Burkhauser, editors, is published by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, August 2003. 448 pp. $45 cloth ISBN 0 88099 260-3 / $22 paper ISBN 0 88099 259-X. Opinions expressed are solely those of the authors. We encourage you to request a review copy of this book.

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