A Few Staggering Facts About People with Disabilities

I’ve been doing some research on asset-building for people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments when I came across a few staggering statistics about people with disabilities:

• People with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and to live in poverty than any other single demographic group in the United States today.
• As many as 70 percent of people with disabilities are unemployed.
• One-third of adults with disabilities live in households with total income of $15,000 or less, as compared to only 12 percent of those without disabilities.
• More than 65 percent of individuals in poverty for 36 months or more during a 48-month period have a disability.
• The poverty rate among people with disabilities is increasing relative to that of working-age people without work limitations.

Contrary to many people’s misinformed opinion, being on SSI is not a ticket to easy street. I am on SSI. My federal SSI payment is $674.00, or 74.6% of the Federal Poverty Level for a family of one. I live with family and am able to share expenses so I am able to able to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. I am one of the lucky ones.

There is a lot of discrimination and bigotry towards people who receive disability payments. I don’t know if it’s the same in other parts of the country but here in Wisconsin, people on disability are looked at suspiciously. We are judged. Others wonder why it is we can’t work because even if body part X doesn’t work, body parts K, L, M, N, O and P sure as heck do. Surely we could type or answer phones or at the very least be a greeter at Walmart!

What all of these people don’t see is the physical toll our disabilities and impairments take on our bodies. They don’t see that my self-cares take several hours in the morning and that some times, by the end, I’m so exhausted I don’t have the energy to do anything else but read a book that day. They don’t see that I may look able-bodied and “normal” but that I really and truly did have a spinal cord injury. My body is not the same as it used to be. I ran errands around town for several hours yesterday. I’m really tired today. I don’t know how I would’ve gone to an 8-hour work-shift job today, if I had to.

My long and winding point is this: Unless you really and truly know the individual personally and know they are being “lazy” and defrauding the system, don’t judge someone for receiving SSI/disability payments. It’s not an easy life. We don’t need your pity but we also don’t need your scorn.