Overcoming Barriers to Inclusion
Across the world, there are more than one billion people with disabilities, i.e. 16% of the global population. In other words, 1 in 6 people live with a disability. People with disabilities are exposed to a greater risk of poverty and social exclusion: in the European Union, 29.7% of disabled individuals are at risk of poverty, compared to 18.8% of people without disabilities. In addition, the employment rate of people with disabilities between 20 and 64 years of age is just 51.3%, compared to 75.6% of people without disabilities.
Governments use specific subsidies (e.g. disability pensions) to ensure that people with disabilities have a decent lifestyle, and active employment policies to promote their right to work. On the demand side, active employment policies aim to influence the behavior of companies. Imposing quotas, for example, which require companies to hire a certain number of employees with disabilities, or pay a penalty. Active supply-side labor policies, on the other hand, aim to increase the skills of job seekers, for example through training courses. Finally, worker protection legislation aims to protect them from sudden and/or unjustified dismissal.
Various states combine these three elements (subsidies, active employment policies, worker protection) in different ways. In Anglo-Saxon countries, for example, access to disability transfers is determined by income, subsidies are low and the criteria for receiving them are very stringent. The labor market is extremely flexible, with little protection for workers. In contrast, in Northern European countries, benefits are universalistic and very generous, investments in active employment policies are high, and workers are highly protected.
These differences arise from drastically different conceptions of welfare. In Anglo-Saxon countries, welfare has a residual role. It is believed that overly generous benefits would be a disincentive to look for work, and that, in a highly flexible labor market, the level of employment is higher. In fact, employers can hire more easily, knowing that they could fire the new hires relatively quickly should they need to. In Northern European countries, welfare is considered a social investment. Benefits are seen as tools that provide people with the resources they need to be able to look for a job or continue working, and greater protection of workers prevents them from being fired abruptly in the event of economic crises. These two conceptions of welfare have one thing in common: both believe that active employment policies increase the chances of finding work.
Which policy mix is most effective for increasing the employment of people with disabilities?
As I point out in one of my articles, the literature shows that economic incentives do not represent an employment disincentive: on the contrary, in the countries where benefits are more generous, people with disabilities have a better chance of finding a job.
As for the effectiveness of active employment policies, different studies reach conflicting conclusions. What is certain is that, in order to be effective, these policies must be carefully designed. Training courses for the unemployed are often not accessible for people with disabilities. Furthermore, in many countries the penalties for companies that do not comply with reservation quotas are too low, favoring a context where employers prefer candidates without disabilities to aspiring employees with disabilities but equal qualifications.
Finally, the possibility of easily firing people does not encourage employers to give a chance to disabled candidates. Persons with disabilities often are the last to be hired and the first to be fired, so that in a more flexible labor market, workers with disabilities are more likely to lose their jobs more in a recession.
In conclusion, generous disability benefits, investments in well-designed employment policies, and high protection of workers' rights are essential to promote the right to work of disabled individuals and guarantee them a decent livelihood.