Economic Living Conditions for Persons with Disabilities – A Register-Based Mapping is a first attempt to delineate groups with different types of disabilities based on available register information, and to map the economic living conditions of persons with disabilities. The central research question is to what extent the economic living conditions of families with children under the age of 18, where either children or adults have disabilities, differ from those of the population as a whole.
Based on information on service users, conditions, and functional status among recipients of public benefits and services, as well as an overview of interest organizations working to improve the situation of persons with disabilities, register-based definitions were developed for 78 types of disabilities, including chronic illnesses. These definitions are not mutually exclusive and the list is not intended to cover all disabilities. They include sensory, physical, cognitive and psychological disabilities. The definitions are used to delineate groups with disabilities among residents in 2023.
We calculated two levels of economic living-condition indicators. For 52 of these groups, we produced overarching indicators: the share of people living in a low-income household and the median equivalised household income. For 22 groups, additional indicators were calculated: net wealth, labour market attachment, and receipt of housing allowance, financial assistance and allowance for care. We also identified the share of individuals who reached the user-fee exemption threshold (frikort) early in the year or during 2023, as an indicator of health-related expenditures. For these 22 groups, we also present income and low-income rates broken down by household/family type, who in the household has a disability, level of centrality, and the immigrant category of the main income earner. For the remaining 26 disabilities we only present basic demography.
Among families with children, couples generally have better economic living conditions than single parents — both in the population as a whole and among households with disabilities. At the same time, the difference between all couples and those where there are children or adults with disabilities is greater among couples than among single parents.
Among single parents with a child with a disability, the share with low income is slightly lower than among all single parents with children under 18, but the difference is small, and the low-income rate is still more than twice as high as in the population overall. Among single parents who themselves have a disability, the share with low income is higher and the median income lower for many groups.
There are disability groups in which the share reaching the user-fee exemption threshold within the first three months of the year is several times higher than in the population. This applies especially to users of personal assistance (BPA), persons with eating disorders, and persons with cerebral palsy.