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State information > Alabama Disability Statistics Table From 2002 American Community Survey

Alabama Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 850,000 people in Alabama have a disability, or 20.9% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 155,000 people, or 3.8% of the population 5 and over, have difficulty performing self-care activities, also known as Activities of Daily Living, such as dressing, bathing, or getting around inside the home. Read more about these data.

Subject Population (Thousands) With a disability (Thousands) With a disability (Percent) With a self-care difficulty (Thousands) With a self-care difficulty (Percent)
Total in Alabama
(ages 5 and over)
4,069 850 20.9% 155 3.8%
Disability Type          
Sensory   219   51 23.4%
Mobility   512   138 27.0%
Cognitive   271   86 31.8%
Self-care   155   155  
Leaving the home   293   113 38.7%
Work disability   479   113 23.6%
Gender          
Male 1,945 394 20.3% 70 3.6%
Female 2,125 457 21.5% 85 4.0%
Age          
Children (5-17) 803 60 7.5% 9 1.1%
    5-15 679 48 7.1% 7 1.1%
    16-17 124 12 9.5% 1 1.1%
Working Ages (18-64) 2,705 478 17.7% 75 2.8%
    18-44 1,652 184 11.1% 27 1.6%
    45-64 1,052 294 27.9% 48 4.5%
Elderly (65+) 562 312 55.6% 71 12.7%
    65-74 314 138 44.0% 28 8.9%
    75-84 190 127 66.8% 24 12.5%
    85+ 59 48 81.2% 20 33.8%
Race          
White 2,958 615 20.8% 107 3.6%
African American 1,043 226 21.7% 47 4.5%
Asian/Pacific Islander 36 4 10.4% 0 0.6%
American Indian/Alaska Native 54 14 25.8% 3 5.9%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 73 8 10.7% 1 1.0%
Non-Hispanic 3,996 843 21.1% 154 3.9%
Family Income          
In poverty 650 187 28.8% 41 6.3%
Above poverty 3,404 663 19.5% 114 3.4%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 695 396 57.0% 87 12.6%
Supplemental Security Income 103 100 97.1% 27 26.2%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 1,852 183 9.9% 10 0.5%
Unemployed (in labor force) 150 23 15.3% 2 1.3%
Not in labor force 694 271 39.1% 63 9.1%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 449 177 39.4% 35 7.8%
Lives with others 3,620 674 18.6% 120 3.3%

Source: Tabulations by the Center for PAS from the 2002 American Community Survey (ACS).

About the Alabama 2002 ACS Disability Data

The Center for Personal Assistance Services has compiled state and national data on the prevalence of overall disability and of self-care difficulty, by gender, age, race and ethnicity, type of disability, family income, benefit recipiency, employment status, and living arrangement. These statistics are based on our tabulations of public use data sets from the 2002 American Community Survey (ACS), containing information on over 1 million residents of randomly selected U.S. households. Because it is a household survey, people living in institutions such as nursing homes are not included.

The 2002 ACS offers two significant advantages over disability estimates obtained from the 2000 Census. An obvious advantage is that the data are more recent. More importantly, major problems have been discovered in the responses to two of the six disability questions from the 2000 Census long form, due largely to the procedures for collecting data on households that failed to respond to the paper questionnaire. Although the ACS questionnaire features the same six disability items, the survey's procedures for handling survey non-response are different and do not appear to be affected by the same problems. We therefore believe that the ACS estimates of disability rates, though considerably lower than those from the 2000 Census, are far more reliable and should be strongly preferred over those obtained from the 2000 Census, especially for working-age adults.

View more current and valid disability statistics from the ACS:

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