Trends and differentials in disability: challenges in measurement

With the development of society and economy, personal and social burdens of chronic diseases became bigger, while it used to be infections and acute diseases that gave most burdens to society and economy. Therefore, it was tried to suggest what group should be specially managed by identifying the frequency of chronic diseases according to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, sex, marital status and job in the adult group in Korea. The materials used for this study were the results of Standard Adult Survey on 2,118 adults representing Korean adults abstracted by compounded sample survey by Integrated Safety Management of Hazardous Substances and Human Exposure Assessment Foundation Agency which was founded by the National Institute of Food and Drug Safety Evaluation in March, 2010 to evaluate the status of hazardous materials’ exposure status through food and drug. The indexes showing socio-demographic characteristics used for this analysis were obtained through survey results. The subjects were asked to answer if they had hypertension, diabetes or kidney diseases. Data were analyzed through Chi-Square Test to see if there was significant difference as well as to identify the diagnosis frequency of such diseases according to socio-demographic characteristics.

The present population structure of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA, in Spanish)-Argentina by age shows a relevant proportion of aging people and the consequent increase of the incidence and prevalence of cronic-degeneratives and disabling illnesses in this specific age group.
The purpose of this research is to analyses the profiles of aging people who dwell in private households in CABA-Argentina in 2011 and to examine their differences according to the presence or the absence of disabilities. This research explores these characteristics in the context of the private households in which they inhabit.
According to the bio-psycho-social conceptualization of disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the purpose is to explore the potential of analysis of the methodology applied by the Annual Survey of Households of the CABA-Argentina, proposed by the General Division of Statistics and Censuses of the City of Buenos Aires, 2011, and its Module on Disability. The Survey is a representative sampling of the total local area and those administrative and political subdivisions (Comunas, in Spanish).
The statistics results of this Survey produce new and vital information to study the specific differential profiles of aging people with and without disabilities in CABA-Argentina.

This paper proposes a new method to estimate disability transition rates from national cross-sectional health surveys. The proposed method estimates age-specific transition rates from cross-sectional data according to well-documented longitudinal age-specific health transition rates of other populations, used as standards, and the proportion of health and unhealthy individuals by age, reported in cross-sectional datasets. In order to estimate healthy life expectancy, this paper makes use of most recent Brazilian health survey data The preliminary results indicate that the estimated disability transition rates are consistent with the current literature. Moreover, the estimated parameters for the simple model specification seem to produce very reliable results. In 1998, 2003 and 2008 the estimated life expectancy – with and without any disability – do not show significant statistical differences from other estimates, produced by other methods.
A second exercise will be conducted by estimating the parameters including covariates: sex, race and education and to estimate differentials in healthy life expectancy.

Empirical studies on disability across countries and over time provide useful information for designing focused interventions and policy recommendations. To better understand health outcomes as well as inequalities, reliable data sources are essential. One of the major concerns in carrying out cross country or temporal analysis is the reliability as well as the comparability of data sources. This problem is particularly acute for disability estimates and analysis.
For researchers, census microdata offers important advantages over tables because with the former it is possible not only to take into account variations in definitions, concepts, codes and universes but also to analyze the demography of disability by age, gender, birth cohort, and other important characteristics. The paper offers an overview of microdata on disability available from IPUMS-International, the world’s largest, readily accessible repository of census microdata. We discuss disability data for 68 countries and 211 samples. The paper focuses on the methodology and policy issues related to integration of disability microdata, analyzes demographic data on disability prevalence, and identifies some of the methodological issues that need to be addressed in order to improve the quality and comparability of census data on disability.

Life expectancy among the elderly has been increasing for decades and it has drawn attention to the health conditions of those added years. Functional Capacity (FC) has been used as a basic indicator to appraise health conditions and elderly well-being.
To conceptually characterize FC, there is a standardized framework such as The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The diversity of proposals to operationalize the concept covers from the way the question is constructed to the scales used to evaluate FC, making it difficult comparison among studies.
An indicator for FC is constructed using Item Response Theory (IRT). Data is the health supplement of the Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD) in 1998, 2003 and 2008. Since the seven questions under scrutiny presented several level answers, a Generalized Partial Credit Model for ordered polytomous data is adjusted. Answers included four levels of difficulty. A GLM model was then fitted to the indicator using socio-economic explanatory variables.
This paper shows that it is possible to construct a FC scale using IRT. Comparison between two populations is possible if at least a common question exists for the two surveys. One can classify tasks according to some power of discrimination between levels of FC.

We are in the ‘Globalized world’. India as a developing nation with 1,210,193,422 million people (on 1st March 2011 Census) is emerging in all its socioeconomic frontiers. India as a nation has best translated its wealth into social benefits for people, especially to the persons with disabilities. Impairment of senses severely affects human development, which in turn affects the economy of a country, depending on the size of the population affected and cost incurred. India as a country, unlike US which does not translate their wealth into social benefits as per the HDI report & data (2011). Hence there is a need in India to evolve a study, on the additional cost involved in bringing up of a hearing impaired persons in India, as Government of India spends part of its GNP on welfare and social justice activities, which are also involved as the measure of quality of life based on life expectancy, literacy of the hearing impaired persons of India and increase the demographic dividend. But this research study will have its basis and will have to empirically consider the trends and differentials in measuring additional cost of bringing up a child with hearing disability in Indian population.

The recent evidence shows that strong relationship between formal educations, adult health and disability; higher level of education is associated with lower level of mortality and disability. We used the self rated health indicators to assess the health inequalities at regional level in Pakistan. Little research has been conducted in Pakistan on the health and disability status and virtually absent at sub-national level. This study aims to investigate and compare the determinant of disability for male and female in each province in Pakistan. We developed the hypothesis that higher education is negatively related to adult health and disability. A cross section survey of adults in Pakistan was carried out in 2002 by World health survey. Women were more likely than men to describe their health as poor. Determinants of disability differed between men and women, possibly highlighting underlying cultural norms and gender roles in the society. Understanding the regional context of disability and its determinants within the prevailing culture will be important to tailor intervention programs aimed at improving health of the Pakistan societies.

The last census in 2000 to 2010 there has been a lot of changes with detailing including, by municipality, of information on migration, marriage, fertility, education, work and income, disabled persons, households and offset to work and study, and travel time to work. (IBGE)
The results of Census 2000 reflect this new approach in the treatment the issue of people with disabilities.
The results of the 2000 Census showed that about 24.6 million people, or 14.5% of the total population, had some kind of disability or handicap.
The largest concentration of people who declared themselves was impaired in areas
urban-19.8 million from 4.8 million in rural areas.
In 2010, there were 45.6 million people with at least one of the shortcomings which have been investigated (visual, hearing, motor and mental), representing 23.9% of the population, in other words, this number has doubled.(IBGE)
This article aims to address the gap distribution (type and age) in the 2000 Census and how they have evolved for the 2010 census, referring to children from 5 to 14 years, meaning they are at school age in Brazil and in Minas Gerais. Check the items addressed at the 2000 Census and what was added in the 2010 census.

The objective of this study is twofold, firstly, to estimate the prevalence of multiple disabilities among the older population in India; secondly, to examine the socioeconomic determinants of multiple disabilities among the older population. This study used the India Human Development Survey Data (IHDS) for the analysis. Bivariate, Multinomial Logit Regression and Multiple Classification Analysis are used as methods of analyses. Disability score is constructed for measuring the multiple disabilities among the older population. The results of disability prevalence show, a high prevalence of multiple disabilities among the older population in India. Further, disability prevalence varies considerably by age and socio-economic characteristics of the older population. Among all the socioeconomic factors, economic factor emerged as a dominant predictor of prevalence of multiple disabilities among the older population in India. The findings of the dimension specific assessment reveal that the disability in walking is the highest among all the disabilities.

Education is the key to advancement of persons with handicaps as it provides access to information, enables them to communicate their needs, interest and experiences, brings them into contact with other student, increases their confidence and encourages them to assert their rights. One of the biggest challenges facing education systems throughout the world is that of inclusion in education.. According to Howell (2006), this understanding is deeply rooted in a historical assumption that learners of all ages can be identified and classified through notions of what is normal and abnormal. The objectives of the study relationship between education, handicap and development. Also to study the socio-economic features of handicap. Documentary method and secondary data are used for the study. The data was drawn from 2006 National Population and Housing Census. According to Census 2006, about 1.4 percentage of the total population and almost 1 out of 100 persons were handicapped. The Iran government has laws and schemes to promote the education of handicap children at various levels. Free education is to be provided to all the handicap children under the age of 18. However, exclusionary policies and practices that deny admission to handicap children are widely prevent all over the country.