Disability and Poverty: Connections and Transitions Part 2

Disability, as illustrated in the previous chapter, appears to fragment or interrupt work, but the effects of reductions or loss of money inflows reach dramatic proportions when confronted with increased financial costs induced by the impairment, what I will be referring to as direct costs. Disability sometimes means differential needs for disability-specific or adapted items and services as well as greater consistent quantities of those utilised by everyone (e.g., transport). These come at a high cost, rising incrementally, as it seems, with the severity of impairment, geographical distance and a host of other factors. Direct costs are many, but the most impoverishing, as those interviewed stressed, are often health care and medication, followed by travel costs, and for those who seek them, specialised equipment and assistive devices. These are mapped out below. The combination of these costs is the ultimate blow to economically fragile households, especially when they are met by lost or fragmented labour power and hence few or no earnings. In turn, they persistently intensify the need to work as the key priority, permanently fixed. These costs impoverish families in multiple and interacting ways, imposing on assets, consumption, production and psychological well-being as they are trapped even deeper in cycles of deprivation, inequality and insecurity.