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

Alaska Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 85,000 people in Alaska have a disability, or 14.8% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 13,000 people, or 2.3% 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 Alaska
(ages 5 and over)		 576 85 14.8% 13 2.3%
Disability Type          
Sensory   27   3 12.4%
Mobility   48   12 24.8%
Cognitive   27   6 24.1%
Self-care   13   13  
Leaving the home   22   9 42.6%
Work disability   35   10 29.0%
Gender          
Male 294 43 14.5% 6 1.9%
Female 281 42 15.0% 7 2.6%
Age          
Children (5-17) 142 11 7.4% 1 1.1%
    5-15 119 9 7.3% 1 1.2%
    16-17 23 2 8.1% 0 0.2%
Working Ages (18-64) 396 56 14.1% 8 2.1%
    18-44 236 26 11.0% 3 1.5%
    45-64 160 30 18.7% 5 3.0%
Elderly (65+) 38 18 48.5% 3 8.5%
    65-74 23 8 35.6% 1 4.9%
    75-84 13 8 63.3% 1 9.5%
    85+ 2 2 97.6% 1 40.7%
Race          
White 444 61 13.7% 9 2.1%
African American 22 3 11.8% 0 1.6%
Asian/Pacific Islander 35 6 16.1% 1 2.9%
American Indian/Alaska Native 108 21 19.4% 3 2.8%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 22 5 21.0% 1 5.8%
Non-Hispanic 554 80 14.5% 12 2.1%
Family Income          
In poverty 41 10 25.3% 2 4.6%
Above poverty 532 74 14.0% 11 2.1%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 50 24 47.9% 5 10.6%
Supplemental Security Income 5 5 95.3% 2 40.5%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 278 27 9.7% 2 0.8%
Unemployed (in labor force) 29 5 19.1% 1 1.9%
Not in labor force 80 23 28.9% 6 7.1%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 51 14 26.7% 3 5.1%
Lives with others 524 71 13.6% 10 2.0%

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

About the Alaska 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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