Integrated census microdata on disability: obstacles and opportunities for demographic analysis using the IPUMS-International database

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.