Disability and Poverty Dynamics in Developing Contexts
Summary
Disability and poverty interact in multiple, reinforcing ways across low- and middle-income settings. Persons with disabilities often face barriers to education, employment and basic services that reduce income opportunities, while limited resources hinder access to healthcare, assistive devices and social participation. Extra costs associated with mobility, personal assistance and medical care can push households into deeper economic vulnerability, creating a cycle in which poverty exacerbates functional limitations and vice versa. Social exclusion, inadequate data and fragmented policy frameworks further compound deprivation. Recent demographic and survey studies highlight heterogeneity within disabled populations, revealing that severity of impairment, household composition and rural or urban location shape poverty trajectories. Progress towards inclusive development under the Sustainable Development Goals demands integrated social protection, education policy reforms, disability-responsive planning and robust disability-disaggregated data to break the bidirectional link between disability and poverty.
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Disability and Poverty Dynamics in Developing Contexts publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in disability and poverty dynamics in developing contexts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Extra costs of disability: Additional expenditures that individuals or households incur to achieve the same standard of living as those without impairments, including spending on transport, care, assistive devices and health services.
Functional domain: A specific area of activity or participation—such as mobility, hearing or cognition—used to assess the extent and interaction of impairments across daily life.
Social protection mechanisms: Public policies and programmes—such as cash transfers, subsidies or fee waivers—designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability among at-risk groups, including persons with disabilities.
Unmet food needs: A measure of household food insecurity indicating when basic nutritional requirements are not satisfied, often employed to assess economic vulnerability in displaced or marginalised populations.
References
- Association between Disability and Unmet Food Needs in the Venezuelan Migrant and Refugee Population: Analysis of a Population-Based Survey, 2022. Nutrients (2023).
- Impact of Universal Primary Education Policy on the Schooling of Girls and Children with Disabilities in Uganda. Education Sciences (2023).
- Links across disabilities: unveiling associations between functional domains. BMC Public Health (2024).
- Extra costs of living with a disability: A review and agenda for research. Disability and Health Journal (2017).
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