Grant: Healthy and Productive Work - Partnership Grants

Employment is an important channel through which individuals develop self-esteem, consolidate their social network, and secure sufficient income for retirement. Yet, it remains widely acknowledged that persons with disabilities lag seriously in employment. According to Statistics Canada, the employment rate of people with disabilities was twenty percentage points lower and their unemployment rate five percentage points higher. Women and those aged 35 and above seem particularly vulnerable.In 2001, 40% of women with disabilities aged of 15-64 years were part of the Canadian workforce, compared to 69% of women without disabilities in the same age category (Statistics Canada, 2012). Aging of the Canadian population will add further challenges to public services and programs. Data on the prevalence of disabilities are clear - rates of disability for Canadians 65 years or older are double those of the population at large, and the prevalence of disabilities increases with age for almost all types of disabilities. The later suggests that the socioeconomic impacts of disabilities will likely grow in the future as the Canadian population continues aging. This proposal contains an interdisciplinary research program aimed at developing economic policies to help persons with disabilities. Our research program covers policies to foster job search, job retention and promotion, and facilitate transition from the labor market to retirement. Our research program recognizes that existing data sources (survey and administrative data)are necessary yet insufficient to estimate econometric models capturing the complex realities facing persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities may for example have pessimistic views of their chances on the labor market and withhold effort to search for jobs and get promoted. They may also fail to understand the complexities of public programs and their fiscal incidences.