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

South Carolina Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 643,000 people in South Carolina have a disability, or 17.3% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 103,000 people, or 2.8% 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 South Carolina
(ages 5 and over)
3,708 643 17.3% 103 2.8%
Disability Type          
Sensory   169   31 18.5%
Mobility   353   92 26.0%
Cognitive   204   55 27.1%
Self-care   103   103  
Leaving the home   210   77 36.7%
Work disability   327   78 23.7%
Gender          
Male 1,775 293 16.5% 44 2.5%
Female 1,933 349 18.1% 60 3.1%
Age          
Children (5-17) 708 52 7.3% 6 0.8%
    5-15 601 43 7.2% 3 0.6%
    16-17 108 8 7.5% 2 1.9%
Working Ages (18-64) 2,534 374 14.7% 51 2.0%
    18-44 1,538 154 10.0% 18 1.2%
    45-64 996 219 22.0% 33 3.3%
Elderly (65+) 466 217 46.7% 47 10.0%
    65-74 268 101 37.9% 18 6.6%
    75-84 161 85 52.7% 18 10.9%
    85+ 37 31 84.1% 11 30.5%
Race          
White 2,534 452 17.8% 68 2.7%
African American 1,096 182 16.6% 35 3.2%
Asian/Pacific Islander 43 4 8.5% 0 0.4%
American Indian/Alaska Native 29 6 22.1% 1 4.1%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 93 8 8.9% 1 0.7%
Non-Hispanic 3,615 634 17.5% 103 2.8%
Family Income          
In poverty 511 128 25.1% 23 4.6%
Above poverty 3,181 513 16.1% 80 2.5%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 568 281 49.5% 62 10.9%
Supplemental Security Income 62 59 95.4% 13 21.9%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 1,785 148 8.3% 7 0.4%
Unemployed (in labor force) 147 23 15.4% 2 1.6%
Not in labor force 581 201 34.6% 42 7.2%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 421 132 31.3% 19 4.6%
Lives with others 3,287 511 15.5% 84 2.6%

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

About the South 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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