The Disability Discrimination Act in the UK: Helping or Hindering Employment Amongst the Disabled?

The enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 triggered a substantial academic debate about its consequences on employment rates of disabled people. In contrast, the employment provision of the 1996 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in Britain has received little attention. Exploiting both pooled and longitudinal data, this paper provides robust evidence that, similar to the ADA in the USA, the DDA has had no impact on the employment rate of disabled people or possibly worsened it. Possible reasons for this are higher uncertainty around litigation costs, low levels of general awareness about the Act among disabled people and employers, and a lack of financial support.

[1]  C. Ai,et al.  Interaction terms in logit and probit models , 2003 .

[2]  J. Angrist,et al.  Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act , 1998, Journal of Political Economy.

[3]  Lawrence F. Katz,et al.  Disaggregating Employment Protection: The Case of Disability Discrimination , 2005 .

[4]  P. Sloane,et al.  Disability, gender, and the British labour market , 2006 .

[5]  Scott Schaefer,et al.  Layoffs and Litigation , 1998 .

[6]  P. Sloane,et al.  Disability, Gender and the Labour Market in Wales , 2006 .

[7]  Douglas L. Kruse,et al.  Employment of People with Disabilities Following the Ada , 2003 .

[8]  M Bajekal,et al.  Review of Disability Estimates and Definitions: A study carried out on behalf of the Department for Workand Pensions , 2004 .

[9]  P. Sloane,et al.  Disability and the labour market: an analysis of British males. , 2000, Journal of health economics.

[10]  A. Houtenville,et al.  The Employment of Working-Age People with Disabilities in the 1980s and 1990s: What Current Data Can and Cannot Tell Us , 2001 .

[11]  P. Sloane,et al.  Disability, Gender and the Labour Market , 2003, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[12]  Thomas DeLeire,et al.  The Wage and Employment Effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act , 2000 .

[13]  R. Wilkins.  The Effects of Disability on Labour Force Status in Australia , 2004 .

[14]  K. Chay.  The Impact of Federal Civil Rights Policy on Black Economic Progress: Evidence from the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 , 1998 .

[15]  J. Hotchkiss.  A Closer Look at the Employment Impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act , 2002, The Journal of Human Resources.

[16]  J. Heckman,et al.  Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks , 1991 .