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State information > North Carolina Disability Statistics Table From 2002 American Community Survey

North Carolina Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 1,384,000 people in North Carolina have a disability, or 18.5% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 220,000 people, or 2.9% 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 North Carolina
(ages 5 and over)
7,484 1,384 18.5% 220 2.9%
Disability Type          
Sensory   368   81 21.9%
Mobility   799   199 24.9%
Cognitive   419   114 27.3%
Self-care   220   220  
Leaving the home   425   160 37.7%
Work disability   738   169 22.9%
Gender          
Male 3,637 672 18.5% 85 2.3%
Female 3,848 712 18.5% 135 3.5%
Age          
Children (5-17) 1,482 113 7.6% 11 0.7%
    5-15 1,258 91 7.2% 10 0.8%
    16-17 224 22 9.9% 1 0.5%
Working Ages (18-64) 5,068 800 15.8% 106 2.1%
    18-44 3,154 334 10.6% 35 1.1%
    45-64 1,914 466 24.4% 71 3.7%
Elderly (65+) 935 470 50.3% 103 11.0%
    65-74 529 212 40.0% 34 6.5%
    75-84 320 189 59.0% 46 14.3%
    85+ 86 70 81.7% 23 26.9%
Race          
White 5,505 1,017 18.5% 156 2.8%
African American 1,620 333 20.6% 62 3.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander 134 15 10.9% 1 0.6%
American Indian/Alaska Native 135 27 19.7% 5 3.5%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 382 30 7.9% 4 1.1%
Non-Hispanic 7,102 1,354 19.1% 216 3.0%
Family Income          
In poverty 1,033 266 25.8% 50 4.9%
Above poverty 6,426 1,115 17.4% 170 2.6%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 1,172 623 53.2% 135 11.5%
Supplemental Security Income 132 125 94.6% 32 24.3%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 3,564 356 10.0% 17 0.5%
Unemployed (in labor force) 317 55 17.4% 3 1.1%
Not in labor force 1,133 387 34.2% 86 7.6%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 874 312 35.7% 57 6.5%
Lives with others 6,610 1,072 16.2% 163 2.5%

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

About the North Carolina 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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