{"id":198,"date":"2014-11-24T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/families\/?p=198"},"modified":"2014-11-24T12:00:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:00:56","slug":"marriage-rates-among-people-with-disabilities-save-the-data-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2014\/11\/24\/marriage-rates-among-people-with-disabilities-save-the-data-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage rates among people with disabilities (save the data edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross posted on\u00a0the Family Inequality blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Disability is a very broad concept, representing a wide array of conditions that are not easily captured in a simple demographic survey. However, disabilities are very prevalent, especially in an aging society, and the people who experience disabilities\u00a0differ in important\u00a0ways from those who do not. Previously I reported — in a preliminary way — that people with disabilities are\u00a0much more likely to divorce<\/a>\u00a0than those without. Here I present some numbers on marriage rates.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the kind of thorough, probing analysis this subject requires. But I have two reasons to do it now. First is that I hope to motivate other people to pursue this issue in greater depth. And second, I want to highlight the importance of the data I’m using — the American Community Survey (ACS) — because it might be not available for much longer.\u00a0These questions have been slated for demolition by the U.S. Census Bureau on cost-saving grounds. I put details about this issue — and how to register your opinion with the federal government — at the end of the post.<\/p>\n

Disabilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ACS asks\u00a0five disability questions<\/a>\u00a0(I put the shorthand label after each):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Is this person deaf or does he\/she have serious difficulty hearing? (Hearing)<\/li>\n
  2. Is this person blind or does he\/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses? (Vision)<\/li>\n
  3. Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions? (Cognitive)<\/li>\n
  4. Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs? (Ambulatory)<\/li>\n
  5. Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing? (Independent living)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These aren’t perfect questions, but they cover a lot of ground, and the ACS — which involves about 3 million households —\u00a0can’t get into too much detail.<\/p>\n

    One\u00a0great thing about having these questions on the giant ACS is you can use the data to get all the way down to the local level, or into small race\/ethnic groups. And with the marital events questions, you can combine disability information and marriage information.<\/p>\n

    First-marriage rates<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Using marital events (did you get married in the last year), marital history (how many times have you been married), detailed race and ethnicity breakdowns, and the disability questions above, I produced the following figure. This uses the combined 2008-2012 ACS data because these are small groups, but\u00a0even with\u00a0five years of data these groups get quite small. There are about 90,000 non-Hispanic Whites with a cognitive disability in my sample, but only 356 people who are both\u00a0White and American Indian\u00a0with\u00a0a hearing disability (the smallest group I included). This sample is\u00a0people ages 18-49 who have never been married (or just got married).<\/p>\n

    \"disab-marriage-rates\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    The overall first-marriage rate for people ages 18-49 is 71.8 per 1,000. For people with disabilities it’s 41.1 (shown by the blue line). So that’s much lower than for the general population. But there is a very wide variation across these groups, from 15.5 per thousand for Blacks with disabilities in independent living all the way up to above the national average for Whites and White\/American Indians with hearing disabilities. (For every condition, Blacks with disabilities have the lowest marriage rates.)<\/p>\n

    I don’t draw any conclusions here, except that this is an important subject and I hope more people will study it. Also, we need data like this.<\/p>\n

    In previous posts demonstrating the value of this data source, I wrote about:<\/p>\n