Abstract
The coincidence of poverty and disability has been widely acknowledged. The focus has been on the degree to which individuals with mental and physical disabilities face poverty because of their exclusion from the labor market and societal discrimination. There has been less concern, however, with the degree to which disability and illness are distributed in ways that reflect gender, racial, and economic inequalities.
Historically, poverty and disability have been addressed by separate governmental agencies and social assistance programs. With minor exceptions, disability has been addressed through programs structured on a social insurance model while poverty has been dealt with by a means-tested public-assistance model. The nature and mode of assistance provided through both models reinforce a social and economic system in which the ideal citizen is a male engaged in waged work that provides sufficient income for family support and who is without responsibility for caretaking work within the home. Because this ideal neither reflects the lived experience of most families nor addresses the structural causes of poverty or the inequitable distribution of poverty and disability in society, the development of a new ideal or ethic must be promoted.
In this article, the authors examine the nature of the association between poverty and disability with the goal of encouraging more comprehensive forms of social provision that confront the inequitable distribution of illness and disability as well as the economic and social structures that generate these patterns. These measures would benefit individuals who experience disability or impairment but who also confront the forces that maintain widespread poverty
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About the Authors
Jenny Pokempner joined YLC in the spring of 2021 as the Policy Director, working on both child welfare and juvenile justice issues, with particular emphasis on the needs and entitlements of older foster youth. Prior to joining YLC, Jenny worked at the Juvenile Law Center as a senior attorney and has played a large role in state and national reform work related to older youth in foster care, with areas of focus on: older youth permanency, extended foster care, eliminating group care, and improving educational and employment outcomes and opportunities. Jenny values using legal strategies that are informed by and done in partnership with young people with experience in foster care. Jenny is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She is also founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. Her path breaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent social justice issues in reproductive justice, policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics. Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Harvard Program in Ethics & the Professions, Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race & Ethnicity, and the Fulbright Program. Recent recognitions of her work include elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and National Academy of Medicine; Rutgers University Honorary Doctor of Laws degree; Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award; and American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award.
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