Factors in Studying Employment for Persons with Disability

Barbara Altman

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787149922
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Disabilities in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The current literature regarding employment among persons with disabilities produces research results dependent on definitions of work disability, the discipline within which research takes places, the model or paradigm of disability in which the research is framed, the methodology and measures used and the cultural context in which employment occurs. This volume seeks to address those factors which have made describing, predicting and examining the work experience of a person with a disability both different and difficult. Contributors examine less frequently anaylzed aspects of employment for persons with disabilities, and offer a variety of approaches to the conceptualization of work, how they differ across cultures, organizations, and types of disability. Topics covered include examination of range of contextual framing of employment for those with disabilities, well-being, the impact of gender, poverty and education and the collection concludes by examining the future of employment developments and trends and the impacts on inclusion of people with disabilities in the paid workforce.

PART 1
RELATIONSHIP OF GENDER AND OTHER SOCIODEMOGRAPHICS TO WORK ROLE

CHAPTER 1

EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES AMONG MEN AND WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES: HOW THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER AND DISABILITY STATUS SHAPES LABOR MARKET INEQUALITY

David Pettinicchio and Michelle Maroto

ABSTRACT

Purpose – This chapter assesses how gender and disability status intersect to shape employment and earnings outcomes for working-age adults in the United States.

Methodology/approach – The research pools five years of data from the 2010–2015 Current Population Survey to compare employment and earnings outcomes for men and women with different types of physical and cognitive disabilities to those who specifically report work-limiting disabilities.

Findings – The findings show that people with different types of limitations, including those not specific to work, experienced large disparities in employment and earnings and these outcomes also varied for men and women. The multiplicative effects of gender and disability on labor market outcomes led to a hierarchy of disadvantage where women with cognitive or multiple disabilities experienced the lowest employment rates and earnings levels. However, within groups, disability presented the strongest negative effects for men, which created a smaller gender wage gap among people with disabilities.

Originality/value – This chapter provides quantitative evidence for the multiplicative effects of gender and disability status on employment and earnings. It further extends an intersectional framework by highlighting the gendered aspects of the ways in which different disabilities shape labor market inequalities. Considering multiple intersecting statuses demonstrates how the interaction between disability type and gender produce distinct labor market outcomes.

Keywords: Disability; gender; intersectionality; labor market inequality

INTRODUCTION

Despite protections from equal rights and antidiscrimination legislation, women and people with disabilities are still disadvantaged in the labor market. Even though women have increased their participation in the labor force and made large gains in education since the 1970s, a gender wage gap exacerbated by childcare responsibilities remains (Blau & Kahn, 2006; DiPrete & Buchmann, 2013; England, 2010). Among people with disabilities, labor force participation has declined over the last 30 years, and there is considerable variation in employment rates by disability status. For instance, people with mental or cognitive disabilities have lower rates of employment than individuals with physical disabilities, regardless of occupation (Jones, 2008, 2011; Maroto & Pettinicchio, 2014b, 2015; Wilkins, 2003). Earnings gaps are also larger for people with work limitations, cognitive difficulties, and independent-living barriers, but people with hearing difficulties tend to experience the smallest earnings gaps (Baldwin & Johnson, 1994; Burkhauser, Daly, Houtenville, & Nargis, 2001; DeLeire, 1995; Lewis & Allee, 1992; Unger, 2002). Building on the evidence for continuing wage gaps by gender and disability type, we seek to address how these two statuses jointly influence labor market outcomes for workers. Previous research demonstrates large additive effects on employment and earnings. Using an intersectional approach as our foundation, we illustrate how these effects become multiplicative.

Many have sought to answer why labor market barriers and economic inequalities among women and people with disabilities have not declined more precipitously since the passage of key pieces of legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. For women, scholars initially pointed to problems of enforcement of antidiscrimination legislation placing much of the burden on victims of discrimination (Burstein, 1990; Reskin, 2001). They have also alluded to class-based inequality in accessing family policy intended to provide women with resources and opportunities to participate in the labor force (Korpi, Ferrarini, & Englund, 2013; Pettit, Hook, & Hagan, 2009). Beyond the policy focus, researchers have drawn from statistical discrimination, implicit bias, and status characteristics theories to show how employment discrimination can result from both employers’ intentional actions based on prejudice, as well as unconscious bias (Arrow, 1973; Reskin & Roos, 1990; Ridgeway, 1991, 1997). Thus, scholars agree that labor market discrimination, shifts in labor market supply-and-demand, and occupational segmentation also contribute to the gender wage gap in spite of antidiscrimination policy (Acker, 2006; Blau & Kahn, 2006; Ridgeway, 2011).

Many of these explanations also pertain to the persistent labor market inequality among Americans with disabilities (Baldwin & Johnson, 1994; Kaye, Jans, & Jones, 2011; Kruse & Schur, 2003; Robert & Harlan, 2006; Schwochau & Blanck, 2000; Stein, 2003). In addition to broader claims about the lack of policy enforcement (Maroto & Pettinicchio, 2014a), scholars also point to differences in human capital, education, age, and job preferences (Blanck, Adya, Myhill, Samant, & Chen, 2007; Blanck, Schur, Kruse, Schwochau, & Song, 2003), workers’ dependence on public assistance (Acemoglu & Angrist, 2001; She & Livermore, 2007), the nature of work (Beegle & Stock, 2003; Jones & Sloane, 2010), occupational segregation (Maroto & Pettinicchio, 2014b), and employer attitudes (Domzal, Houtenville, & Sharma 2008; Hunt & Hunt, 2004; Unger, 2002). Disability may receive a lower status value through ascriptive processes that are especially prevalent when employers base their preferences about people with disabilities on limited information about average group differences (Arrow, 1998; Blanck et al., 2003; Ridgeway, 1991; Webster & Hysom, 1998). Importantly, stereotypes and employer attitudes not only vary by the nature of the disability, but also by how disability type interacts with other characteristics such as gender.

Intersectional studies show that workers’ experiences are unique to their multiple intersecting identities. Employers often make decisions based on stereotypes that are about a combination of statuses (Browne & Misra, 2003), which results in multiplicative effects that extend disadvantages (Greenman & Xie, 2008; Snipp & Cheung, 2016). Only recently have studies begun to examine disability in relation to other characteristics in shaping economic inequality, and few disaggregate the effects of these interactions by the nature of disability. This has become all the more relevant given the way in which the intersectionality of multiple statuses defines “modern discrimination” (Marchiondo, Ran, & Cortina, 2015). Women with disabilities may be “twice penalized” (O’Hara, 2004) or in “double jeopardy” (Doren & Benz, 2001) as a result of structural and attitudinal factors associated with the intersection of both statuses. Drawing from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s recent TedWomen Talk (Crenshaw, October 27, 2016), understanding how disability and gender intersect to shape employment and earnings can shed light as to why employers may hire women and, may hire people with disabilities, but not women with disabilities.

In this chapter, we consider the intersection of gender and disability in shaping labor market outcomes among people with different disabilities. More specifically, we focus on variation in both employment rates and average earnings among men and women who report either a work-limiting disability or disability more generally. We address the following research questions: Are the effects of gender and disability on employment and earnings multiplicative? Do they compound disadvantage as theories of intersectionality would predict? And, how do employment rates and average earnings vary for men and women with different types of disabilities, including those disabilities identified as work limiting? Given that employer preferences, workplace accommodations, occupational segregation, and earnings vary considerably by the nature of a person’s disability, it is important to break apart disability to illustrate how “being disabled” interacts with gender in the labor market.

We pool five years of data from the 2010–2015 Current Population Survey (CPS) to analyze how rates of employment and annual earnings vary by disability status and gender. For these years, the CPS included both work-limiting and broader definitions of disability, which allows us to compare gendered outcomes across a variety of measures. We specifically examine how work-limiting disabilities and how the presence of cognitive, physical, independent living, self-care, sensory, and multiple disabilities differentially influence earnings and employment for men and women.

Our findings show that people with different types of limitations, including those not specific to work, experienced large disparities in employment and earnings and the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Part 1 Relationship of Gender and Other Sociodemographics to Work Role
• Part 2 Disability Inclusion Strategies and Interventions
• Part 3 Work Role and Well-Being
• Part 4 The Future of Work
• About the Authors
• Index