Self-employment, income, and poor with disabilities: the 2016 inclusion of people with disabilities act in Brazil.

We exploit the implementation of the Inclusion of People with Disabilities Act in Brazil in early 2016 and use stigma theory to focus on the poor with disabilities, a double-stigmatized group, in a developing country setting. We hypothesize after the passage of the law, the poor with disabilities will pursue more self-employment than employment, but their income will remain low, with only the income of the employed improving. Contrary to expectations, the results show that the odds of self-employment were not higher than employment after the law. But as predicted, only the income of the employed improved, with the income gap between the employed and self-employed with disabilities growing wider after the passage of the law. The findings demonstrate that the law mainly benefitted the poor with disabilities who were able to gain employment but not the self-employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]