disadvantaged populations

Why have aspirations to improve economic prospects for disabled Americans fallen short? Legal modifications and retrenchments have reduced the effectiveness of the Americans with Disabilities Act as a set of legal tools to counter discrimination. But broader supply-and-demand factors in the U.S. labor market have also played an important role. Employed disabled people tend to be clustered into certain occupations and industries, many of which offer low wages and constricted opportunities for advancement. The clustering of people with disabilities into certain low-wage occupations can amount to a form of occupational ghettoization, reinforcing labor market inequalities that leave disabled workers at a long-term disadvantage. To better understand how future public policies could boost economic prospects for disabled workers, my colleague Michelle Maroto and I have explored the processes that create – and might break down — occupational ghettos.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are pushing a radical overhaul of the federal budget designed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin—a plan to make huge cuts in vital U.S. safety net programs to pay for big new tax cuts for the very wealthy. Intense controversy already surrounds Ryan’s proposal to replace Medicare with a system of vouchers of steadily reduced value, forcing all senior citizens to pay more for their health care. But another part of the Ryan budget is equally extreme, because sixty percent of is cuts over the next decade would come from safety-net programs for highly vulnerable low-income Americans.

A whopping $3.3 trillion would be slashed from programs aiding people with incomes below or just above the poverty line (set at $22,113 a year for a family of four in 2010). Each year, more than $300 billion would be slashed, leaving the safety net torn asunder. more...