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

Colorado Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 564,000 people in Colorado have a disability, or 13.8% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 85,000 people, or 2.1% 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 Colorado
(ages 5 and over)
4,085 564 13.8% 85 2.1%
Disability Type          
Sensory   149   28 18.8%
Mobility   298   74 24.8%
Cognitive   189   50 26.3%
Self-care   85   85  
Leaving the home   158   58 36.9%
Work disability   258   60 23.4%
Gender          
Male 2,041 272 13.3% 35 1.7%
Female 2,044 292 14.3% 51 2.5%
Age          
Children (5-17) 825 54 6.5% 8 1.0%
    5-15 708 44 6.2% 8 1.1%
    16-17 117 9 8.1% 0 0.3%
Working Ages (18-64) 2,852 332 11.6% 48 1.7%
    18-44 1,792 146 8.2% 14 0.8%
    45-64 1,060 185 17.5% 34 3.2%
Elderly (65+) 409 178 43.7% 29 7.1%
    65-74 227 73 32.0% 10 4.4%
    75-84 138 72 52.3% 10 7.4%
    85+ 44 34 77.0% 9 20.8%
Race          
White 3,495 482 13.8% 71 2.0%
African American 176 28 16.1% 6 3.6%
Asian/Pacific Islander 126 17 13.6% 1 0.6%
American Indian/Alaska Native 67 16 23.4% 3 5.1%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 712 87 12.2% 16 2.2%
Non-Hispanic 3,373 477 14.1% 70 2.1%
Family Income          
In poverty 382 82 21.5% 16 4.1%
Above poverty 3,694 481 13.0% 70 1.9%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 481 222 46.1% 39 8.2%
Supplemental Security Income 47 44 93.5% 11 24.0%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 2,116 170 8.0% 10 0.5%
Unemployed (in labor force) 152 17 11.5% 2 1.2%
Not in labor force 565 143 25.3% 36 6.4%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 478 123 25.7% 23 4.8%
Lives with others 3,608 441 12.2% 63 1.7%

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

About the Colorado 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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