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Background

The linkage between poverty and disability is strong and goes in both directions.

Poverty causes disability through malnutrition, poor health care, and dangerous living conditions.

Disability can cause poverty by preventing the full participation of disabled people in the economic and social life of their communities, especially if the proper supports and accommodations are not available. In fact, the qualitative evident suggests that disabled people are significantly poor in developing countries, and more so than non-disabled counterpart.

Disability is not easily conceptualized and it cannot be defined in any exhaustive way; it is influenced by differing cultures, social institutions, and physical environments. An individual with limited mobility could be at a great disadvantage in an agricultural subsistence farming society yet if that same person lived in a society with advanced services, supports and technology, he/she might encounter only few challenges. Disability is caused by a wide range of interacting aspects like communicable diseases, genetic factors, injuries, aging and many more. Each disability has its own range of possible causes; the list of disabilities itself is very lengthy, including physical disabilities, cognitive disabilities, vision and hearing difficulties, and mental health disorders, such as depression.

To alleviate poverty, economic development programs and policies must embrace the entire population, including vulnerable groups like those with disabilities. Without integrating the disabled population, economic development efforts can not be effective since disabled people face a higher risk of poverty and poor people experience a much heightened rate of disabilities. Excluding disabled people from the development agenda would undermine meeting the overall goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Disability affects hundreds of millions of families in developing countries. Currently around 10 per cent of the total world's population, or roughly 650 million people, live with a disability. In most of the OECD countries, females have higher rates of disability than males. 80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries, according to the UN Development Program (UNDP). The World Bank estimates that 20 per cent of the world's poorest people have some kind of disability, and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged. Statistics show a steady increase in these numbers. The reasons include:

·         Emergence of new diseases and other causes of impairment, such as HIV/AIDS, stress and alcohol and drug abuse;

·         Increasing life span and numbers of elderly persons, many of whom have impairments;

·         Projected increases in the number of disabled children over the next 30 years, particularly in the developing countries, due to malnutrition, diseases, child labour and other causes;

·         Armed conflict and violence. For every child killed in warfare, three are injured and acquire a permanent form of disability. In some countries, up to a quarter of disabilities result from injuries and violence, says WHO.

 In countries with life expectancies over 70 years of age, people spend on average about 8 years, or 11.5 per cent of their life span, living with disabilities.

The two-way link between poverty and disability creates a vicious circle. Poor people are more at risk of acquiring a disability because of lack of access to good nutrition, health care, sanitation, as well as safe living and working conditions. Once this occurs, people face barriers to the education, employment, and public services that can help them escape poverty.

Studies indicates that there is evidence of the impact of visual impairment on multiple dimensions of poverty. Research shows that visual impairment affects indicators of material well-being (such as income, employment and consumption), access to and effective use of services (such as education and health), and social and psychological status (such as marriage prospects and decision-making power). These different aspects are closely interlinked, and characteristics such as gender and urban or rural location have an important effect on the disability-poverty relationship.