Aging with Disability and Disability with Aging

Abstract

People with early-onset disabilities are said to "age with disability," while those with mid- or late-life onsets are said to have "disability with aging." This is stereotypic since disability and aging are processes that interleave across the whole life course. We show this empirically by studying duration of disabilities by age in the U.S. community-dwelling adult population. To see how persons with childhood-onset disabilities and persons with adulthood-onset differ, we compare their sociodemographic, health, disability, and social participation characteristics. The data source is the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement. Results showed that most persons with a disability are older and have . had recent onsets, but some persons with childhood onsets have entered middle and older ages. The greatest diversity of disability experience is at the middle ages. People with childhood-onset disabilities have more disabilities than those with adulthood-onset disabilities, but their social role participation is similar or even higher. For both groups, poor overall health is the main factor that reduces social participation. Service providers must expect to find many commonalities among persons with disabilities of all ages while being attentive to psychosocial differences that may spring from childhood-onset versus adulthood-onset disabilities.