Disability

This report examines how many disabled elderly are at risk because they do not receive the assistance they need in basic self-maintenance activities. The source of data was the 1982 and 1984 National Long-Term Care Surveys.

Physical impairments are commonly believed to require relatively more active hands-on assistance with the activities of daily living (ADLs) while cognitive impairments use relatively more supervisory or standby assistance.

This paper looks at programmatic definitions of disability for federal disability programs by: (1) reviewing and examining major programmatic definitions of disability, and (2) describing complex eligibility processes by using the Social Security Disability Insurance program as an example.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the variability in estimates of disability in the U.S. elderly population as a function of differing definitions of physical disability and cognitive impairment.

This paper compares the health characteristics (health status, health insurance coverage, use of physician and hospital care, and cost of care) of persons with and without disabilities. Three separate analyses are included: one on children, one on working age adults (aged 18-64), and one on the elderly. Various levels of functional disability are also examined.

This analysis compares predictors of institutional residency in 1977 and 1985 among two national cohorts of individuals who responded to national surveys of nursing home and community-dwelling elderly persons. A state-level analysis of change in predictors of state nursing home use rates for 1976 and 1986 was also conducted using aggregate state sociodemographic and Medicaid policy variables.

This paper was prepared as part of the Project to Design a Survey of Persons with Developmental Disabilities. The overall purpose of this project was to develop a national survey design that would provide data on a nationally representative sample of persons. This paper was conducted to develop a National Survey of Mentally Retarded and Developmentally Disabled Persons in Community Settings.

This report contains information on the extent to which persons with disabilities rely on federal programs, based on the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation. Information on multiple program participation is also presented. The different levels of functional disability derived in Task I (Population Profile of Disability) are used. [87 PDF pages]

Pat Doyle, Esther Miller and Jim Sears Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. This report was prepared under contract #HHS-88-0047 between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Social Services Policy (now DALTCP) and Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services