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

Tennessee Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 1,043,000 people in Tennessee have a disability, or 19.8% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 176,000 people, or 3.3% 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 Tennessee
(ages 5 and over)
5,277 1,043 19.8% 176 3.3%
Disability Type          
Sensory   270   57 21.3%
Mobility   605   161 26.6%
Cognitive   353   106 29.9%
Self-care   176   176  
Leaving the home   352   137 38.9%
Work disability   556   133 24.0%
Gender          
Male 2,547 476 18.7% 60 2.4%
Female 2,730 567 20.8% 116 4.2%
Age          
Children (5-17) 1,015 83 8.2% 9 0.9%
    5-15 867 68 7.8% 7 0.9%
    16-17 148 15 10.5% 2 1.1%
Working Ages (18-64) 3,582 609 17.0% 86 2.4%
    18-44 2,181 259 11.9% 30 1.4%
    45-64 1,400 350 25.0% 56 4.0%
Elderly (65+) 681 351 51.6% 81 11.9%
    65-74 384 157 40.8% 30 7.9%
    75-84 237 147 62.4% 34 14.6%
    85+ 60 47 77.6% 16 26.9%
Race          
White 4,298 857 19.9% 139 3.2%
African American 861 175 20.4% 35 4.0%
Asian/Pacific Islander 70 5 7.5% 0 0.5%
American Indian/Alaska Native 41 13 31.8% 3 6.9%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 118 12 10.4% 2 1.9%
Non-Hispanic 5,160 1,031 20.0% 174 3.4%
Family Income          
In poverty 722 244 33.7% 44 6.1%
Above poverty 4,539 795 17.5% 132 2.9%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 837 441 52.7% 102 12.2%
Supplemental Security Income 111 106 95.6% 30 27.0%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 2,548 254 10.0% 12 0.5%
Unemployed (in labor force) 172 34 19.8% 1 0.8%
Not in labor force 847 320 37.7% 73 8.6%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 636 226 35.6% 40 6.4%
Lives with others 4,642 817 17.6% 136 2.9%

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

About the Tennessee 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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