The additional cost of disability: a new measure and its application to sensory impairment

Abstract

This article introduces a method using consensual budget standards to estimate additional costs incurred by households that include disabled people with specified impairments. The article reports on a first application of this to UK single adults with sensory impairments. Using the Minimum Income Standard method, the research aims to identify the cost of disability by working with groups of disabled people to agree what additions to minimum budgets for non-disabled people are required for someone with a given impairment. This provides a more tangible account of the cost of disability than economic analysis of living standards achieved by disabled and non-disabled people, and adds to surveys of actual spending on additional items, which do not account for unmet need. The research on vision and hearing impairment yields new insights into costs arising from the way disabled people live their everyday lives, not just from spending on adaptations and equipment.

Keywords:

• Cost of disability
• deaf
• vision impairment
• minimum income

Notes

1. In this context, sight impaired means eligible for certification as sight impaired, and severely sight impaired means eligible for certification as severely sight impaired. The term vision impaired is used in the following text to refer to either case and sight loss more generally.