Replication Data for: DISABILITY DATA

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) disability can be defined as, “an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restriction. Impairment is a problem in the body function or structure. An activity limitation is the difficulty encountered by an individual in executing some task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situation. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives”. Disability is caused by diseases, malnutrition, incorrect treatment or non-treatment, physical or mental violence and war, accidents due to inadequate protection at the workplace and in traffic situations and increasingly age related diseases.
In developed countries, the proportion of people with disabilities ranges from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of total population and the prevalence of disability in developing countries is reported to be 1 per cent to 2 per cent of the population. This wide variation is attributable to the varied definitions of persons with disabilities, differences in the method of data collection and resource allocation at the country levels. Persons living with disabilities face multiple barriers to their participation, due to injustice on the basis of other grounds, including race, color, sex, language, religion, political, national, ethnic, social origin, property, birth and age. As a result, persons with disabilities are at a high risk of poverty, which in itself increases the likelihood of having a disability.
Persons with disabilities are considered as the world’s largest minority. They are more likely to live in poverty than their non-disabled peers, a small portion of governmental allocation will not be sufficient to uplift the social and economic conditions of differently abled people. The capacity building and overall development of differently abled persons in par with their non-disabled counterparts and their social inclusion in all developmental activities can be ensured by proper addressing of their problems. This can be achieved by proper research works and proper academic discussions.