Is There a Disability Gap in Employment Rates in Developing Countries?

Abstract

This paper examines differences in employment rates between persons with and without disabilities in 15 developing countries using the World Health Survey. We find that people with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities in nine countries. Across countries, disability gaps in employment rates are more often found for men than women. The largest disability gap in employment rates is found for persons with multiple disabilities. For countries with a disability gap, results from a logistic decomposition suggest that observable characteristics of persons with/without disabilities do not explain most of the gap.

Keywords: disability, employment, self-employment, developing countries, logit decomposition

JEL Classification: I31, J14, O15