Capitalism and Disability: Economic Justice

The Political Economy of Disability: Examining the Intersection of Capitalism and Disability in Contemporary Society

The relationship between capitalism and disability extends far beyond simple workplace discrimination or accessibility barriers. Rather, disability serves as a fundamental organizing principle within capitalist economies, one that shapes labor markets, social policy, and the distribution of economic resources. Understanding this relationship requires examining both the historical construction of disability as a category and its contemporary manifestations in employment patterns, poverty rates, and social welfare systems.

Main Content

Historical Construction of Disability Under Capitalism

The emergence of disability as a distinct social category coincides with the rise of industrial capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Prior to industrialization, the distinction between disabled and non-disabled workers remained relatively fluid, as agricultural and artisanal labor accommodated diverse physical and cognitive abilities (Oliver, 1990). The shift to factory production, however, introduced standardized work processes that privileged particular bodily configurations and capabilities. Workers unable to maintain the pace and precision demanded by mechanized production became categorized as disabled, marking them as unsuitable for productive labor (Finkelstein, 1980).

Disability emerged as a socially-created category derived from labor relations, a product of the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society (Abberley, 1987). This framework positioned disability not as an inherent biological reality, but as a designation applied to those whose labor appeared non-exploitable under prevailing production methods. The social model of disability, developed by British disability activists in the 1970s, distinguished between impairment (the actual physical or cognitive variation) and disability (the social exclusion and oppression experienced due to societal barriers). This distinction proved crucial for understanding how capitalist economic structures actively produce disability through their organization of work and social relations.

The proliferation of institutions during the nineteenth century further solidified this construction. Prisons, asylums, workhouses, and hospitals emerged as mechanisms of social control, segregating those deemed unfit for productive labor (Oliver, 1990). These institutions served dual functions: removing potentially disruptive populations from the labor market while simultaneously creating new industries around the management and commodification of disabled bodies. This pattern established a template that persists in contemporary forms such as nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and the disability services industry.

Contemporary Employment Patterns

Current employment statistics reveal the persistent economic marginalization of disabled people within capitalist labor markets. In 2024, only 22.7 percent of working-age people with disabilities were employed, compared to 65.5 percent of those without disabilities (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). This dramatic disparity has remained relatively stable despite decades of civil rights legislation and anti-discrimination efforts. During 2023, 24.2 percent of people with a disability participated in the labor force, while the labor force participation rate for people without a disability was 68.1 percent (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024).

These aggregate figures mask even deeper disparities along lines of race, gender, and age. Black people with disabilities had unemployment rates of 10.2 percent and Latinx or Hispanic people with disabilities had rates of 9.2 percent, compared to lower rates for white disabled people (National Disability Institute, 2022). Furthermore, 33.2 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native women with disabilities lived in poverty in the Southeast region (National Partnership for Women & Families, 2018), demonstrating how disability intersects with other systems of oppression to compound economic disadvantage.

The wage gap presents another dimension of economic inequality. In 2020, workers with disabilities aged 18-64 were paid, on average, 74 cents for every dollar paid to their nondisabled peers (Center for American Progress, 2021). This differential persists even among those who successfully navigate employment barriers, suggesting that discrimination operates not only at the hiring stage but throughout the employment relationship.

Several factors contribute to these employment disparities. Employers often perceive disabled workers as less productive or more costly due to accommodation requirements, despite research suggesting that accommodation costs typically remain modest (Blanck et al., 2003). The structural organization of work around an assumed able-bodied norm creates barriers that exclude many disabled people before they even enter the hiring process. Additionally, the concentration of disabled workers in lower-wage occupations and part-time positions reflects both occupational segregation and limited advancement opportunities (Russell, 2002).

Poverty and Economic Insecurity

The employment disparities facing disabled people translate directly into disproportionate rates of poverty and economic hardship. In 2019, 21.6 percent of disabled people were considered poor under the Census's Supplemental Poverty Measure, compared with just over 10 percent of people without disabilities (Center for American Progress, 2021). Traditional poverty measures actually underestimate the economic challenges facing disabled people, as they fail to account for disability-related expenses such as medical care, assistive technology, personal care assistance, and accessible transportation.

The poverty rate for adults with disabilities is more than twice the rate of adults with no disability, at 27 percent compared with 12 percent (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2022). This relationship operates bidirectionally: disability increases the risk of poverty through reduced employment opportunities and additional expenses, while poverty increases the risk of disability through limited access to healthcare, higher exposure to occupational hazards, and environmental health risks (Goodman & Stapleton, 2019).

The intersection of disability and poverty becomes even more pronounced when considering race and gender. In 2020, one in four disabled Black adults in the United States lived in poverty, while just over one in seven of their white counterparts did so (Center for American Progress, 2021). These disparities reflect the compounding effects of racism, ableism, and economic inequality, demonstrating how different systems of oppression interact to produce particularly severe disadvantage for multiply-marginalized individuals.

Housing insecurity represents another critical dimension of economic precarity. In 2021, nearly 40 percent of renters with any disability experienced housing insecurity, meaning they were struggling to pay their rent, compared with a national average of 25 percent (Center for American Progress, 2021). The lack of affordable, accessible housing options forces many disabled people into inadequate or institutionalized living situations, further limiting their economic and social participation.

The Social Security System and the Reserve Army of Labor

The relationship between capitalism and disability manifests clearly in social security and welfare systems. These programs ostensibly provide support for disabled people unable to participate in the labor market, yet they simultaneously serve crucial functions for capital accumulation. The disability benefit system serves as a socially legitimized means by which the capitalist class can avoid hiring or retaining non-standard workers and can shift the cost of supporting them onto poverty-based government programs (Russell, 1998).

Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs require applicants to prove they cannot engage in substantial gainful activity, effectively demanding that disabled people declare themselves entirely unemployable to access benefits. This requirement creates a perverse incentive structure: disabled people must choose between attempting to work with inadequate support or accessing survival benefits by removing themselves from the labor force entirely. The application process itself proves grueling, often requiring years of appeals and legal representation, during which applicants must demonstrate their incapacity in ways that prove both materially and psychologically devastating (Russell, 2002).

From a Marxist perspective, this system maintains what Marx termed the reserve army of labor - a pool of unemployed workers whose existence disciplines employed workers and suppresses wages. Being categorized as disabled and the subsequent impoverishment that many face when struggling to survive on disability benefits generates a very realistic fear among workers of becoming disabled (Russell, 1998). This fear functions as a form of labor discipline, encouraging workers to accept poor conditions and resist organizing for fear of unemployment and disability.

The Commodification of Disability

Beyond exclusion from productive labor, disabled people become subjects of extraction through what Russell termed the "money model of disablement." Entrepreneurs and rehabilitation specialists have made impaired bodies of use to the economic order, turning the disabled body into a commodity around which social policies get created or rejected according to their market value (Russell, 1997). This commodification operates through multiple channels.

The nursing home industry exemplifies this dynamic. Rather than supporting independent living and community integration, the industry generates profits by warehousing disabled and elderly people in institutional settings. Federal Medicaid funding flows through these institutions, creating lucrative revenue streams for private operators while disabled people themselves remain impoverished and segregated. Similarly, the rehabilitation industry, assistive technology manufacturers, and disability services sector collectively constitute a multibillion-dollar economy built around managing disabled bodies (Russell, 1998).

This commodification extends to the criminal justice system. Nearly half of all incarcerated women reported having a disability in 2016, and people behind bars in state and federal prisons are nearly three times as likely as the nonincarcerated population to report having a disability (Center for American Progress, 2021). The prison-industrial complex exploits disabled prisoners through forced labor while generating profits through contracts for medical services, telecommunications, and commissary goods. Upon release, the collateral consequences of incarceration compound existing employment barriers, perpetuating cycles of poverty and marginalization.

Civil Rights Legislation and Its Limitations

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 represented the most comprehensive civil rights legislation for disabled people in U.S. history. Modeled on earlier civil rights laws, the ADA prohibited discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and government services while requiring reasonable accommodations for disabled workers. Proponents expected the law to dramatically improve employment outcomes and economic security for disabled people.

The empirical evidence, however, reveals a more complex picture. Employment rates for disabled men in all age categories, and disabled women under the age of 40, fell sharply after the ADA, representing a clear break from past trends (Acemoglu & Angrist, 2001). Research by Acemoglu and Angrist (2001) found that while the ADA had no effect on wages for disabled workers, employment rates declined significantly following implementation. The ADA had no effect on the wages of disabled workers, which remained approximately 40 percent below those of the non-disabled (Acemoglu & Angrist, 2001).

Several explanations have been proposed for these disappointing outcomes. Some researchers suggest that accommodation requirements increased employers' costs, leading them to avoid hiring disabled workers (DeLeire, 2000). Others point to the difficulty of enforcing anti-discrimination provisions when employment decisions occur behind closed doors. A 1998 study by the American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law showed that disabled workers bringing discrimination suits were unlikely to succeed in court, with employers prevailing 92 percent of the time in cases filed under Title I of the ADA from 1992-98 (American Bar Association, 1998).

The Supreme Court contributed to these limited outcomes through narrow interpretations of the ADA's coverage. A series of decisions in the late 1990s and early 2000s restricted who qualified as disabled under the law, often excluding individuals whose impairments could be mitigated through medication or assistive devices. These rulings created uncertainty about ADA coverage, potentially increasing employer reluctance to hire disabled workers.

More fundamentally, civil rights legislation operates within rather than challenging the basic structure of capitalist labor markets. Civil rights, though necessary to counter individual acts of prejudice and discrimination, have only the power to randomly distribute the maladies of unemployment, income and wage inequality throughout the population, not to meet everyone's material needs (Russell, 1998). Unemployment remains a structural feature of capitalism, and anti-discrimination laws cannot create jobs where labor market dynamics produce chronic joblessness.

Potential Benefits of Capitalist Framework

Despite the substantial critiques outlined above, some scholars and policymakers identify potential benefits within the capitalist framework for addressing disability. Technological innovation driven by market competition has produced assistive devices, accessible design solutions, and communication technologies that enhance independence and participation for many disabled people. Companies competing for disabled consumers and workers have incentives to develop accessible products and inclusive employment practices.

Economic research on companies that attempt to accommodate disability in their workforce suggests they outperform competitors (Accenture, 2018). This finding implies that disability inclusion can align with profit motives when properly structured. Employers report that disabled workers often demonstrate higher retention rates, strong work ethics, and valuable diverse perspectives that benefit organizational performance.

Market-based approaches to disability accommodation theoretically offer flexibility and innovation advantages over rigid regulatory mandates. Competitive pressures might incentivize more creative and effective accommodation solutions than top-down requirements. Additionally, economic growth creates employment opportunities that can benefit all workers, including disabled people, particularly during tight labor markets. The employment-population ratio for people with a disability reached 22.5 percent in 2023, the highest since these data were first reported in June 2008 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024), suggesting that strong labor market conditions can improve outcomes.

The for-profit disability services sector has expanded options in some areas, providing specialized services that government programs might deliver less efficiently. Market mechanisms can theoretically respond more quickly to changing needs and preferences than bureaucratic systems. Entrepreneurship opportunities also exist for disabled people themselves, with self-employment offering alternatives to traditional employment barriers.

Critical Assessment of Purported Benefits

These potential benefits require critical examination, however. Technological innovations remain inaccessible to many disabled people due to high costs and unequal distribution. Market incentives produce solutions primarily for those with purchasing power, leaving impoverished disabled people without access to beneficial technologies. The development of assistive technologies often reflects profitable market segments rather than greatest need, resulting in innovation gaps for less-common disabilities or those affecting primarily poor populations.

The claim that disability-inclusive companies outperform competitors must be contextualized within broader employment patterns. While some exemplary employers demonstrate benefits from inclusion, aggregate employment statistics show that most employers continue to exclude or marginalize disabled workers. The purported business case for disability inclusion has not translated into substantial employment gains across the economy.

Market-based flexibility in accommodations can become a liability when employers have discretion to determine reasonableness. The flexibility in determining reasonable adjustments depending on the severity of impairment, availability of adjustments, business size and relative costs gives employers multiple grounds to argue for the disabled person's exclusion according to the relative efficiency of the accommodation (Roulstone, 2012). This discretion permits discrimination to operate under the guise of business necessity.

Economic growth alone proves insufficient to address disability employment disparities, as demonstrated by persistently low employment rates even during periods of economic expansion. In 2000, ten years after passage of the ADA, despite a growing US economy and a low aggregate national official unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, the unemployment rate for working-age disabled population has barely budged from its chronic level of 65-71 percent (Russell, 2002).

The for-profit disability services sector generates profits through extraction rather than empowerment. Nursing homes, sheltered workshops, and other segregated service models prioritize revenue over community integration and self-determination. The contradiction between profit maximization and genuine disability justice becomes particularly stark in contexts where the most profitable approaches involve institutionalization and control rather than independent living support.

Alternative Frameworks and Reform Proposals

Critics of the capitalist framework for disability policy advocate for more fundamental restructuring. The social model of disability, particularly in its materialist formulations, argues for reorganizing society to accommodate human diversity rather than expecting disabled people to conform to capitalist productivity norms (Oliver, 1990). This might involve guaranteed income programs, universal healthcare, robust independent living supports, and extensive modifications to work structures.

Some reformers propose expanding Social Security work incentives and healthcare access to enable disabled people to attempt employment without risking survival benefits. The Ticket to Work program and Medicaid buy-in provisions represent steps in this direction, though research on their effectiveness remains mixed (Stapleton & Burkhauser, 2003). Asset limit reforms could enable disabled people to accumulate savings and wealth without losing benefits eligibility, addressing the Catch-22 that traps many in poverty.

Universal design principles, if broadly implemented, could reduce the need for individualized accommodations by building accessibility into initial design processes. Public investment in accessible transportation, housing, and communications infrastructure would address systemic barriers that no amount of individual accommodation requirements can overcome. Strengthened enforcement of existing civil rights protections might improve outcomes, though structural unemployment limits the potential impact of anti-discrimination alone.

More radical proposals envision fundamental transformation of capitalist social relations. This might include worker cooperatives providing employment under worker control, community-based independent living arrangements governed by disabled people themselves, and economic systems prioritizing human need over profit accumulation. Such alternatives remain largely theoretical in the contemporary United States, though they draw inspiration from disability justice movements and anti-capitalist organizing.

Income Inequality and Stratification

Disability functions as a key dimension of social stratification under capitalism, similar to race and gender (Pettinicchio, 2015). Over the 1981-2018 period, inequality within the group of households with work limitations has been around 30 percent higher than inequality within the group of households without work limitations, with both groups seeing a similar 70 percent rise in income inequality since 1981 (Meyer & Mok, 2019). This finding demonstrates that disabled people experience both higher baseline inequality and the same dramatic inequality increases affecting all workers under neoliberal capitalism.

The interaction between disability and other axes of stratification produces particularly severe disadvantage. Educational attainment, crucial for employment prospects, varies dramatically by disability status. Disabled students face segregation, inadequate accommodations, and lower expectations that limit educational achievement. These educational disparities then constrain employment options, creating intergenerational cycles of poverty and marginalization.

Wealth accumulation proves especially difficult for disabled people even among those who achieve employment. Disability-related expenses constantly drain resources that might otherwise build assets. Asset limits in benefits programs explicitly prevent wealth accumulation for those receiving support. The absence of employer-provided retirement benefits for workers in part-time or contingent positions leaves many disabled workers without retirement security.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Remote Work

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a natural experiment revealing the social construction of many workplace barriers. As organizations rapidly implemented remote work policies, many disabled workers who had been told accommodations were impossible suddenly found employers capable of flexibility. The shift to remote and hybrid working proved revelatory for disabled communities, with radically different patterns of labor market inclusion resulting from the normalization of remote working (Roulstone & Prideaux, 2022).

This experience demonstrated that many barriers to disabled workers reflected employer preferences and unstated norms rather than genuine operational necessities. The pandemic exposed how the background assumptions structuring reasonable accommodation calculations could shift dramatically when circumstances forced reconsideration of standard practices. Remote work enabled some disabled workers to manage health conditions, avoid exhausting commutes, and work in environments they could control.

However, the pandemic also revealed capitalism's fundamental unwillingness to prioritize disabled people's wellbeing. Disabled people faced heightened health risks as economies reopened prematurely. The characterization of disabilities as "pre-existing conditions" that rendered COVID-19 deaths acceptable reflected eugenic attitudes embedded in capitalist valuations of human life. Essential workers, disproportionately disabled and facing compounded health risks, received inadequate protections as profits took precedence over safety.

Comparative International Perspectives

While this analysis focuses primarily on the United States, international comparisons illuminate how different capitalist economies structure disability policy. European welfare states generally provide more generous disability benefits and stronger employment protections, yet disabled people remain economically marginalized across all capitalist countries. In 2019, 28.4 percent of the EU-27 population aged 16 or more with an activity limitation were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (Eurostat, 2020).

Scandinavian countries with robust social democratic institutions achieve somewhat better outcomes but still exhibit substantial employment gaps and economic disparities (Grover & Soldatic, 2013). The persistence of disability disadvantage across diverse welfare state regimes suggests that reforms within capitalism face inherent limits. While policy variations matter, the fundamental relationship between disability and capital accumulation constrains what reforms can achieve without challenging basic economic structures.

Future Directions

Understanding capitalism and disability requires continued interdisciplinary research examining the micro-level experiences of disabled people, the meso-level institutional arrangements shaping opportunities, and the macro-level economic structures producing disability as a category. Future research should investigate the political economy of specific disability service industries, the role of disability in emerging gig economy arrangements, and the intersection of disability with algorithmic management and automation.

The climate crisis will likely produce increased disability through extreme weather, heat stress, disease, and environmental degradation, while also threatening the survival of disabled people through disrupted supply chains and healthcare systems. Understanding how capitalism simultaneously produces disability and renders disabled people disposable in the face of climate catastrophe represents a critical research and political priority.

The disability justice framework developed by queer and disabled people of color offers important theoretical resources for understanding disability within intersecting systems of oppression. This framework emphasizes collective liberation rather than individual accommodation, centering the experiences of multiply-marginalized disabled people, and connecting disability struggles to broader movements for social transformation.

Conclusion

The relationship between capitalism and disability proves far more fundamental than simple discrimination or accessibility barriers. Disability functions as an organizing principle within capitalist economies, shaping labor markets through the creation of a reserve army of labor, generating profits through the commodification of disabled bodies and lives, and justifying inequality through ideologies of productivity and worth. The persistent economic marginalization of disabled people despite civil rights legislation reveals the limitations of reform within capitalist structures.

While market-based approaches offer some benefits through technological innovation and potential efficiency gains, these advantages remain unevenly distributed and insufficient to address structural disadvantage. The evidence demonstrates that meaningful improvement in disabled people's economic circumstances requires not merely accommodation within existing labor markets, but fundamental transformation of how society organizes production, values human contribution, and distributes resources.

The experiences of disabled people under capitalism illuminate broader questions about economic justice and human dignity. A political economy framework reveals how disability oppression serves capital accumulation while suggesting that disability liberation requires collective transformation of economic relations. As disabled activists and scholars have long argued, achieving genuine equality demands reorganizing society around principles of interdependence, universal accommodation, and human need rather than profit maximization.

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Insights, Analysis, and Developments

Author Credentials: Ian is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Disabled World, a leading resource for news and information on disability issues. With a global perspective shaped by years of travel and lived experience, Ian is a committed proponent of the Social Model of Disability-a transformative framework developed by disabled activists in the 1970s that emphasizes dismantling societal barriers rather than focusing solely on individual impairments. His work reflects a deep commitment to disability rights, accessibility, and social inclusion. To learn more about Ian's background, expertise, and accomplishments, visit his full biography.