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Disability, health and human development

MITRA, Sophie
2018

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This open access book introduces the human development model to define disability and map its links with health and wellbeing, based on Sen’s capability approach. The author uses panel survey data with internationally comparable questions on disability for Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. It presents evidence on the prevalence of disability and its strong and consistent association with multidimensional poverty, mortality, economic insecurity and deprivations in education, morbidity and employment. It shows that disability needs to be considered from multiple angles including aging, gender, health and poverty. Ultimately, this study makes a call for inclusion and prevention interventions as solutions to the deprivations associated with impairments and health conditions.

 

Chapters include:

  • The Human Development Model of Disability, Health and Wellbeing
  • Measurement, Data and Country Context
  • Prevalence of Functional Difficulties
  • Functional Difficulties and Inequalities Through a Static Lens
  • Dynamics of Functional Difficulties and Wellbeing
  • Main Results and Implications

 

No One Left Behind: A review of social protection and disability at the World Bank

KARR, Valerie L
VAN EDEMA, Ashley
SIMS, Jacob
BRUSEGAARD, Callie
2017

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The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development cites poverty eradication as both the ‘greatest global challenge’ and an ‘indispensable requirement’ for sustainable development (UN, 2015). Unfortunately, the path between discourse and practice is rarely clear. This is especially true for the estimated one billion people with disabilities around the globe who face barriers and challenges to inclusion in mainstream development efforts; and for whom disability-specific projects and interventions are far and few between. This paper responds to the lack of available data focused on tracking the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream poverty reduction efforts. It reports on work by a multidisciplinary research team in developing and piloting a methodology measuring disability inclusive investments in the World Bank’s active portfolio. The paper focuses specifically on the World Bank’s social protection portfolio, aligned with SDG 1 (End Poverty), and outlines a methodology for analysing project-level documentation, using key word searches, and codes aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals to determine the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Findings indicate that only a small percentage, 5%, of the World Bank’s active social protection portfolio explicitly include persons with disabilities as target beneficiaries. It goes on to argue that this dearth in disability inclusive development efforts exposes a vital need to systematically include the needs of this population in the planning for, provision of, and assessment of development assistance efforts. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for ensuring future projects are inclusive from program development and implementation through to assessment of outcomes.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

Disabled people and the post-2015 development goal agenda through a disability studies lens

WOLBRING, Gregor
MACKAY, Rachel
RYBCHINSKI, Theresa
NOGA, Jacqueline
2013

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The purpose of this study was to examine the role and visibility of disabled people in the discourses of various global policy processes related to sustainable development and the Post-2015 development agenda. This article makes several recommendations for strengthening the role of disabled people in these discourses. The research addresses the question of how the disability community and sustainable development community relate to each other in these discourses. This study provides quantitative and qualitative data on three aspects of the relationship. One set of data highlights who is seen as a stakeholder in general and the visibility of disabled people in the social sustainability, sustainable consumption, Rio+20 and Post-2015 development agenda proposals discourses and what participants of the online consultation for a disability inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond had to say about the issues of visibility of disabled people in development discourses. A second set of data illuminates the attitudes towards disabled people evident in the SD discourses including through the eyes of the participant of the online consultation for a disability inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond. The final set of data compares the goals and actions seen as desirable for the advancement of SD evident in the SD literature covered and the online consultation for a disability inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond. This study interpreted the data through a disability studies lens. The study found that disabled people were barely visible to invisible in the SD literature covered, that the goals and actions proposed in the SD discourses are of high relevance to disabled people but that these discussions have generally not been explicitly linked to disabled people. It found further that disabled people have clear ideas why they are invisible, what the problems with development policies are and what needs to happen to rectify the problems. It found also that there was a lack of visibility of various SD areas and goals within the disability discourse. This paper provides empirical data that can be used to further the goal of mainstreaming of disabled people into the SD and Post-2015 development discourses as asked for in various high-level UN documents. However, we posit that the utility of our paper goes beyond the disability angle. Our quantitative data also highlights other forms of social group visibility unevenness in the literature and as such, we argue that the data we present in this paper is also of use for other stakeholders such as youth, women and indigenous people and also for NGOs and policy makers.

 

Sustainability, Vol 5

Social transfers : a critical strategy to meet the MDGs

BOURNE, Astrid Walker
MORGAN, Fiona
August 2010

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"This paper outlines the crucial role that social transfers can play by providing an inclusive framework to reduce intergenerational and chronic poverty and accelerate progress to achieve the MDGs"
HelpAge policy briefing

Social transfers and chronic poverty : emerging evidence and the road ahead

DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (DFID)
October 2005

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This paper examines the costs and benefits of social transfers for developing countries. More specifically, it identifies that the successful implementation of social transfers is contingent on: political support and ownership within the country; supportive government policy; integration into a larger social protection framework; and stronger institutional capacity. This work would be useful for anyone with an interest in development planning, social protection and poverty alleviation

Disability and social safety nets in developing countries

MITRA, Sophie
May 2005

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This paper examines how social safety nets can benefit the poor and disabled in developing countries. It explores the links between disability and poverty, and identifies the benefits of inclusive mainstreaming and disability targeted programmes. It analyses the various ways to include the considerations of people with disabilities in the implementation of mainstream safety nets

Disability and poverty reduction strategies : how to ensure that access of persons with disabilities to decent and productive work is part of the PRSP process

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (ILO)
2002

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The World Bank and International Monetary Fund's poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) approach has been widely adopted by many countries. However the examination of current PRSPs shows that disabled people have been forgotten in most of them. This paper summarises reasons why it is important to include disabled people in the PRSP process. It also presents how disabled people should be included in the PRSPs and analyses the way disability has been treated in the PRSP sourcebook

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