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The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability provides a timely and comprehensive overview of the wide range and depth of sociological theory and research on disability—brought together for the first time in one volume. Each section of the Handbook incorporates a uniquely sociological perspective, presented by experts on intersecting social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of disability and complementing disability scholarship. The 37 chapters in this Handbook, organized into three major sections, provide an assessment of where we have been, where we are now, and where we must go with research on and in the sociology of disability. The first section, Defining, Measuring, and Understanding Disability, reviews frameworks foundational to the study of disability, pushes for the inclusion of broader global perspectives, and addresses important dimensions of representation. The second section, Experiencing Disability across the Life Course, presents a combination of perspectives that tie together individual biography, societal, and historical contexts, while emphasizing continuity and change in the dynamic processes linking individuals, institutions, and structures over time. In the third section, Disability, Policy, and the Law, chapters investigate the reproduction of inequality through law, policy, and related institutions and systems, while highlighting how social and political participation empowers people with disabilities and helps to mitigate inequalities and social marginalization. The chapters included in this volume offer a multifaceted resource for students and experienced scientists alike on historical developments, main standards, key issues, and current challenges in the sociological study of disability at the global, national, and regional levels.

Purpose!This chapter assesses how gender and disability status intersect to shape employment and earnings outcomes for working-age adults in the United States. Methodology/approach!The research pools five years of data from the 2010!2015 Current Population Survey to compare employment and earnings outcomes for men and women with different types of physical and cognitive disabilities to those who specifically report work-limiting disabilities. Findings!The findings show that people with different types of limitations, including those not specific to work, experienced large disparities in employ- ment and earnings and these outcomes also varied for men and women. The multiplicative effects of gender and disability on labor market outcomes led to a hierarchy of disadvantage where women with cognitive or multiple dis- abilities experienced the lowest employment rates and earnings levels.

Homeownership is a central component of wealth, but many young adults today struggle to enter the housing market, opting to rent or live at home with their parents instead. Despite these trends, fe...

Although a sizeable body of research has examined the labor market outcomes for sexual minority men, suggesting that gay and bisexual men earn less than their heterosexual counterparts, fewer studies have addressed whether any apparent earnings disadvantages for sexual minority men extend to economic insecurity more broadly. Using 1991–2016 U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) data, we examine three measures of economic insecurity—household income, perceived financial satisfaction, and views about family income—among gay and bisexual men. We find that most sexual minority men experience multiple types of economic insecurity with larger disparities present for bisexual men. Consistent with the labor market literature, we observe that family structure and human capital acquisition primarily accounted for economic insecurity disparities for gay men, and family structure partially explained disparities for bisexual men.

Background Although the COVID-19 pandemic has led to worsening mental health outcomes throughout the Canadian population, its effects have been more acute among already marginalized groups, including people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. This paper examines how heightened fears of contracting the virus, financial impacts, and social isolation contribute to declining mental health among this already vulnerable group. Objective/hypothesis This paper investigates how increases in anxiety, stress, and despair are associated with concerns about getting infected, COVID-19-induced financial hardship, and increased social isolation as a result of adhering to protective measures among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Methods This study uses original national quota-based online survey data (n=1027) collected in June 2020 from people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Threelogistic regressionmodels investigate the relationship between COVID-19’s effects on finances, concerns about contracting the virus, changes in loneliness and belonging, and measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19 and reports of increased anxiety, stress, and despair, net of covariates. Results Models show that increased anxiety, stress, and despair were associated with negative financial effects of COVID-19, greater concerns about contracting COVID-19, increased loneliness, and decreased feelings of belonging. Net of other covariates, increased measures taken to combat COVID-19 was not significantly associated with mental health outcomes. Conclusions Findings address how the global health crisis is contributing to declining mental health status through heightened concerns over contracting the virus, increases in economic insecurity, and growing social isolation, speaking to how health pandemics exacerbate health inequalities.

This study examines how people with disabilities and chronic health conditions—members of a large and diverse group often overlooked by Canadian public policy—are making sense of the Canadian federal government’s response to COVID-19. Using original national online survey data collected in June 2020 (N= 1,027), we investigate how members of this group view the government’s overall response. Although survey results show broad support for the federal government’s pandemic response, findings also indicate fractures based on disability type and specific health condition, political partisanship, region, and experiences with COVID-19. Among these, identification with the Liberal party and receipt of CERB stand out as associated with more positive views. Further examination of qualitative responses shows that these views are also linked to differing perspectives surrounding government benefits and spending, partisan divisions, and other social and cultural cleavages. La présente étude porte sur la façon dont les personnes atteintes de handicap ou de maladie chronique — appartenant à un vaste groupe diversifié, souvent ignoré des politiques publiques canadiennes — interprètent la réaction du gouvernement fédéral canadien à la COVID‑19. À l’aide de données nationales exclusives tirées d’un sondage en ligne effectué en juin 2020 (N= 1 027), nous analysons le point de vue des membres de ce groupe quant à la réaction globale du gouvernement. Bien que les résultats du sondage témoignent d’un large appui à la réaction du gouvernement fédéral à la pandémie, nos observations révèlent également des failles selon la nature du handicap et les particularités liées à l’état de santé, l’allégeance politique, la région et les expériences en ce qui a trait à la COVID‑19. Entre autres éléments, l’allégeance au Parti libéral et le statut de bénéficiaire de la PCU se signalent comme étant associés à des points de vue plus positifs. Un examen plus approfondi des réactions qualitatives montre que ces points de vue sont également liés à des perspectives divergentes entourant les prestations et les dépenses gouvernementales, les divisions partisanes et autres clivages sociaux et culturels.

Despite established recommended standard definitions, measures, and methods by the UN Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to assess dimensions of disability, national censuses vary widely in the questions used to identify people with disabilities. Although many seek to conform ex-ante to ICF definitions, they also deviate from this basic framework in different ways. This complicates ex-post harmonization and standardization for cross-national comparisons of disability prevalence and outcomes influenced by disability status, such as labor market participation. Addressing these issues, this study uses IPUMS International Census microdata since 2,000 to examine disability measurement across 65 countries. We find that definitions, terminology, measurement, and instructions to both respondents and enumerators matter for understanding disability prevalence cross-nationally. For instance, questions that included potentially stigmatizing language were associated with lower rates of disability reporting, but questions that listed specific limitations were associated with higher rates. Beyond disability, our findings also speak more broadly to ongoing challenges in survey harmonization for cross-national comparison.

This paper addresses whether and how unions help to dismantle workplace inequality experienced by people with different types of disabilities. Using pooled 2009-2018 CPS MORG data of 630,799 respondents covering almost a decade, we find that union membership is especially beneficial for people with disabilities compared to the larger population, as well as other status groups. Furthermore, people with the severest disabilities benefit the most from being in unionized work, increasing weekly earnings by 36% for people with self-care and independent living-related disabilities. Because union membership increases disabled workers’ weekly earnings by more than double the increase experienced by people without disabilities, it brings unionized disabled workers closer to overall average earnings with important implications for inequality. Unionized work reduces earnings inequality between disabled and non-disabled workers, but earnings boosts associated with union membership generate more pronounced inequality within groups of workers with disabilities depending on whether individuals have access to unionized employment. We find that gaps among employed unionized and non-unionized disabled workers are significantly larger than those experienced by unionized and non-unionized female, Black, and Hispanic workers.

This study uses 1986–2012 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort data to investigate the relationship between raising children and net worth among younger Baby Boomer parents. I combine fixed-effects and unconditional quantile regression models to estimate changes in net worth associated with having children in different age groups across the wealth distribution. This allows me to test whether standard economic models for savings and consumption over the life course hold for families at different wealth levels. My findings show that the wealth effects of children vary throughout the distribution. Among families at or below the median, children of all ages were associated with wealth declines, likely due to the costs of child-rearing. However, at the 75th percentile and above, wealth increased with the presence of younger children but decreased after those children reached age 18. My results, therefore, provide evidence for a saving and investment model of child-rearing among wealthier families but not among families at or below median wealth levels. For these families, the costs of raising children largely outweighed motivations for saving.

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure.

This paper examines the relationship between coresidence with adult children, wealth, and economic security using data from the 1999-2012 Canadian Survey of Financial Security (SFS). The results, obtained via propensity score matching and linear regression, show that coresidence with and parental support for adult children is negatively associated with non-home assets and positively associated with debt levels among Canadian households. Further analyses suggest that these relationships stem from differences in financial assets, retirement savings, student loan debt, and credit card balances. By linking theories of economic insecurity, social capital, and life course studies, this study demonstrates how changing trajectories among young adults and financial hardship can influence broader household resources and stability.

This study uses National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort data from 1994 through 2012 (N = 16,108 person-years, 4,671 individuals) to investigate how coresidence with adult children influences asset levels among parents. It applies hybrid mixed effects regression models that partition between- and within-person variation to estimate parental savings and financial assets over time and across different households. The results suggest that coresidence with adult children led to decreases in parental assets and savings. In the years in which their children lived at home, parents held 24% less in financial assets and 23% less in savings when compared with the years when adult children were not present. By expanding previous research that shows a relationship between increasing economic insecurity, limited wealth, and the rise in coresidence among young adults, this study also offers broader implications for the interconnectivity of financial hardship across generations.

This paper examines wealth disparities by gender and household structure in the United States using data from the 1998–2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. Following studies of economic insecurity, we placed households at the center of our analysis to highlight the interconnected nature of wealth with multiple aspects of family structure. We investigated net worth by both gender and household structure, which includes variation by partnership status and the presence of other adult relatives and their roles within the household. We found that wealth disparities were largest among single adult households, but these varied by gender. Female single adult households held some of the lowest levels of net worth, but after accounting for key explanations of wealth inequality, single male households actually held greater wealth than two-adult partnered households. This relationship further depended on the presence of extended family members, where gender disparities were smaller among households with other relatives present.

This paper investigates wealth disparities among first-generation immigrants using data from the 2012 Survey of Financial Security. We apply logistic and linear regression models to estimate disparities in homeownership and household equivalent net worth by immigrant status, region of origin, and time since arrival. By focusing on immigrant families from different regions who entered Canada at different points in time, this research applies theories related to assimilation, human capital, and structural barriers to wealth. Our findings demonstrate that even though many immigrant families transition into homeownership and grow their wealth over time, certain first-generation immigrant groups continue to experience wealth disparities many years after their arrival to Canada. In particular, immigrant families from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries experienced the largest wealth gaps. Cet article examine les disparites de richesse entre les immigrants de premiere generation en utilisant les donnees de l'Enquete 2012 sur la securite financiere. Nous appliquons des modeles de regression logistique et lineaire pour estimer les disparites dans la propriete et valeur nette des menages equivalente par le statut d'immigrant, la region d'origine, et le temps ecoule depuis leur arrivee. En se concentrant sur les familles d'immigrants de differentes regions qui sont entres au Canada a differents points dans le temps, cette recherche applique les theories liees a l'assimilation, le capital humain, et les obstacles structurels a la richesse. Nos resultats demontrent que meme si de nombreuses familles d'immigrants transition vers la propriete et de croitre leur richesse au fil du temps, certains groupes d'immigrants de premiere generation continuent d'eprouver des disparites de richesse de nombreuses annees apres leur arrivee au Canada. En particulier, les familles d'immigrants d'Afrique, d'Asie, et les pays du Moyen-Orient ont connu les plus grands ecarts de richesse.

Malgre l importance du rle des marches du credit en matiere de mesure de la richesse, peu de recherche ont ete faites sur les inegalites de richesse entre divers groupes au Canada. C est pourquoi, dans cet article, je documente les disparites que l on a observees, au cours des 15 dernieres annees, en ce qui concerne l avoir net et la propriete d une residence; pour ce faire, j utilise des donnees de trois vagues de resultats de l Enquete canadienne sur la securite financiere (1999, 2005 et 2012). En plus de presenter une analyse de base des inegalites de richesse au Canada, mon etude met en lumiere ces disparites selon divers criteres : le fait d etre autochtone ou non, le degre de scolarite, le fait detre ne au Canada ou non et le fait d avoir un handicap ou non. Mes resultats montrent que, si, globalement, les inegalites de richesse sont restees stables pendant la periode etudiee, celles qui touchent certains groupes se sont accrues. Les menages qui comprennent des immigrants adultes, les personnes handicapees et les personnes moins instruites ont un avoir net inferieur meme quand on tient compte des differences en matiere d âge, de revenu et d heritage. De plus, des modeles de mediation qui demontrent les effets indirects du fait d appartenir a certains groupes sur l avoir net indiquent que les disparites s accroissent avec le temps. Abstract: Despite the importance of credit markets in determining well-being, research on wealth inequality across groups in Canada has been limited. To address this gap, this paper documents disparities in net worth and home ownership over the past 15 years using three waves of the Canadian Survey of Financial Security (1999, 2005, and 2012). Beyond providing a basic discussion of wealth inequality in Canada, this study also highlights wealth disparities by Aboriginal identity, immigrant status, education, and disability status. My findings show that although aggregate wealth inequality has remained stable over this period, disparities have continued to grow for certain disadvantaged groups. Family households with adult immigrants, people with disabilities, and those with less education held less in net worth even after accounting for differences in age, earnings, and inheritance. In addition, mediation models that demonstrate the indirect effects of group membership on net worth also show larger disparities over time.

Purpose This chapter assesses how gender and disability status intersect to shape employment and earnings outcomes for working-age adults in the United States. Methodology/approach The research pools five years of data from the 2010–2015 Current Population Survey to compare employment and earnings outcomes for men and women with different types of physical and cognitive disabilities to those who specifically report work-limiting disabilities. Findings The findings show that people with different types of limitations, including those not specific to work, experienced large disparities in employment and earnings and these outcomes also varied for men and women. The multiplicative effects of gender and disability on labor market outcomes led to a hierarchy of disadvantage where women with cognitive or multiple disabilities experienced the lowest employment rates and earnings levels. However, within groups, disability presented the strongest negative effects for men, which created a smaller gender wage gap among people with disabilities. Originality/value This chapter provides quantitative evidence for the multiplicative effects of gender and disability status on employment and earnings. It further extends an intersectional framework by highlighting the gendered aspects of the ways in which different disabilities shape labor market inequalities. Considering multiple intersecting statuses demonstrates how the interaction between disability type and gender produce distinct labor market outcomes.

Americans with disabilities represent a significant proportion of the population. Despite their numbers and the economic hardships they face, disability is often excluded from general sociological studies of stratification and inequality. To address some of these omissions, this paper focuses on employment and earnings inequality by disability status in the United States since the enactment of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a policy that affects many Americans. After using Current Population Survey data from 1988-2014 to describe these continuing disparities, we review research that incorporates multiple theories to explain continuing gaps in employment and earnings by disability status. In addition to theories pointing to the so-called failures of the ADA, explanations also include general criticisms of the capitalist system and economic downturns, dependence on social welfare and disability benefits, the nature of work, and employer attitudes. We conclude with a call for additional research on disability and discrimination that helps to better situate disability within the American stratification system.

This study extends our knowledge on the negative effects of incarceration to the accumulation of wealth by examining whether, how, and how much incarceration affects home ownership and net worth. It also investigates how these outcomes vary with the time since a person was incarcerated and the number of incarceration periods, along with addressing potential mechanisms behind this relationship. I apply hybrid mixed effects models that disaggregate within- and between person variation to investigate incarceration’s relationship with home ownership and net worth, using National Longitudinal Study of Youth data from 1985 to 2008. I also incorporate a set of mediation models in order to test for indirect effects of incarceration on wealth through earnings, health, and family formation. My results show that incarceration limits wealth accumulation. Compared to never-incarcerated persons, ex-offenders are less likely to own their homes by an average of 5 percentage points, and their probability of home ownership decreases by an additional 28 percentage points after incarceration. Ex-offenders’ net worth also decreases by an average of $42,000 in the years after incarceration. When combined with previous research on incarceration, my findings show that incarceration acts as an absorbing status, potentially leading to the accumulation of disadvantage. Although incarceration’s negative effects on wealth accumulation were partially mediated by its relationship with earnings and family formation, incarceration directly affected home ownership and net worth. In most cases, former inmates began with flatter wealth trajectories and experienced additional losses after incarceration.

Although Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to address, in large part, the declining economic well-being of people with disabilities—twenty years later—the trend has not reversed. To shed light on this puzzle, we use multilevel models to analyze Current Population Survey data from 1988 through 2012 matched with state-level predictors. We take a more nuanced approach than previous research and consider institutional factors related to the creation, enforcement, and interpretation of legislation, as well as individual demographics and employment situations. Our results show continual gaps in employment and earnings by disability status connected to the enactment of state-level antidiscrimination legislation, the number of ADA charges brought to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the results of ADA court settlements and decisions. Our findings suggest a complex relationship between legislative intent and policy outcomes, showcasing the multilayered institutional aspects behind the implementation of disability antidiscrimination legislation.

This paper investigates wealth disparities among first-generation immigrants using data from the 2012 Survey of Financial Security. We apply logistic and linear regression models to estimate disparities in homeownership and household equivalent net worth by immigrant status, region of origin, and time since arrival. By focusing on immigrant families from different regions who entered Canada at different points in time, this research applies theories related to assimilation, human capital, and structural barriers to wealth. Our findings demonstrate that even though many immigrant families transition into homeownership and grow their wealth over time, certain first-generation immigrant groups continue to experience wealth disparities many years after their arrival to Canada. In particular, immigrant families from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries experienced the largest wealth gaps. Cet article examine les disparités de richesse entre les immigrants de première génération en utilisant les données de l'Enquête 2012 sur la sécurité financière. Nous appliquons des modèles de régression logistique et linéaire pour estimer les disparités dans la propriété et valeur nette des ménages équivalente par le statut d'immigrant, la région d'origine, et le temps écoulé depuis leur arrivée. En se concentrant sur les familles d'immigrants de différentes régions qui sont entrés au Canada à différents points dans le temps, cette recherche applique les théories liées à l'assimilation, le capital humain, et les obstacles structurels à la richesse. Nos résultats démontrent que même si de nombreuses familles d'immigrants transition vers la propriété et de croître leur richesse au fil du temps, certains groupes d'immigrants de première génération continuent d'éprouver des disparités de richesse de nombreuses années après leur arrivée au Canada. En particulier, les familles d'immigrants d'Afrique, d'Asie, et les pays du Moyen-Orient ont connu les plus grands écarts de richesse.

As the recent economic crisis has demonstrated, inequality often spans credit and labor markets, supporting a system of cumulative disadvantage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this research draws on stigma, cumulative disadvantage and status characteristics theories to examine whether credit and labor markets intersect through the event of bankruptcy to disadvantage certain individuals over time. The transmission of bankruptcy’s stigma across markets occurs in a specific legal setting where, even though the current U.S. Bankruptcy Code grants bankrupters a fresh start through debt forgiveness, the Fair Credit Reporting Act limits bankrupters’ ability to begin anew because it permits employers to access credit reports. My findings highlight these ambiguities and show that, net of their previous labor market statuses, bankrupters spend less time working and have lower earnings than nonbankrupters. Thus, having become bankrupt exposes people to subsequent disadvantage in the labor market.

When confronted with situations of increasing size and popularity, previously marginalized occupational groups struggle to maintain control over two spheres related to business: the persons involved in the process, and standards for producing products. This analysis applies the concept of control to professionalization strategies used by a sample of body art practitioners in King County, WA. The study findings depict a situation where occupational practitioners pick and choose among informal and formal strategies in order to restructure themselves in response to threats to their control. These practitioners do not follow a set pattern of professionalization, which demonstrates the need to expand dominant ideas of the professions.

Americans with disabilities represent a significant proportion of the population. Despite their numbers and the economic hardships they face, disability is often excluded from general sociological studies of stratification and inequality. To address some of these omissions, this paper focuses on employment and earnings inequality by disability status in the United States since the enactment of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a policy that affects many Americans. After using Current Population Survey data from 1988-2014 to describe these continuing disparities, we review research that incorporates multiple theories to explain continuing gaps in employment and earnings by disability status. In addition to theories pointing to the so-called failures of the ADA, explanations also include general criticisms of the capitalist system and economic downturns, dependence on social welfare and disability benefits, the nature of work, and employer attitudes. We conclude with a call for additional research on disability and discrimination that helps to better situate disability within the American stratification system.&nbsp

We begin with a brief history of social security policy in Russia both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We describe the current pension scheme and present an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the model, with particular attention to the way in which it may disadvantage women and low-wage and informal sector workers. The reasons why Russia is in the process of implementing a social security scheme based largely on a model proposed by the World Bank is also explored. We argue that the decision reflects the effects of both internal and external economic pressures as well as cultural diffusion via the network of neo-liberal economists and pension experts associated with international financial institutions, most notably the World Bank. We conclude with a discussion of how we would restructure the Russian scheme making greater use of the notional defined contribution (NDC) model.

Occupational segregation is a fundamental cause of structural inequality within the labor market, but it remains under-researched in the case of disability status. Using 2011 Amer- ican Community Survey data for working-age adults, we examine the representation of persons with different types of disabilities across occupations and industries. We find that employed workers with disabilities experience occupational segregation that limits their earnings potential. People with disabilities tend to work in lower-skilled jobs with limited educational and experience requirements. However, these disparities also vary by the nature of a person’s disability, which perpetuates inequality by disability status. Although supply-side, human capital variables play a role in shaping earnings, we find that these broader, structural factors and occupational characteristics strongly influence the economic wellbeing of people with disabilities.

Despite the strong relationship between the rise in mass incarceration over the last forty years and racial inequality in employment and wages, few studies have examined the long-term consequences and spillover effects of criminal justice contact on the black-white wealth gap in the United States. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms whereby the local and distal incarceration of a family member affects household wealth, focusing on wealth disparities by race and education. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Current Population Survey, and the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities and Local Jails, we apply fixed-effects and probit models to estimate how a family member’s incarceration influences household assets and debt over panel waves. We find that having an incarcerated family member reduced household assets by 64.3 percent and debt by 85.1 percent after we adjusted for the underrepresentation of institutionalization in SIPP data. We also discuss these findings in the context of broader racial disparities in wealth and employment. Our findings demonstrate how contemporary patterns of mass incarceration contribute to the maintenance of social inequality in wealth and form barriers to economic security for other household members.