Economic Liberty to Disabled Prosperity: The ADA, State-Level Economic Freedom, and Post-Secondary Educational Attainment for the Disabled

Abstract

While the literature on the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) impact on economic outcomes for disabled Americans has focused by and large on employment and wages, the literature on disabled Americans’ accumulation of human capital because of the ADA’s protections has been largely ignored. The sparse literature that does exist has found mixed results, with one paper finding a positive relationship between the ADA and educational attainment and another one finding the opposite. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America, along with a triple-difference framework, this paper finds that the ADA had a negative and statistically significant effect on undergraduate and post-secondary educational attainment and that economic freedom when interacted with the effect of the ADA had a positive and statistically significant effect on the same levels of educational attainment.

Keywords: ADA, Disability, Economic Freedom, Education, Regulation

JEL Classification: J7, J24, P36