Center for Personal Assistance Services University of California, San Francisco  
Jump over persistant main navigation to the sub navigationHome (press control H in some browsers)Formal and Informal PAS (press control F in some browsers)Home and Community PAS (press control C in some browsers)PAS Workforce (press control W in some browsers)Workplace PAS (press control O in some browsers)PAS Users (press control U in some browsers)  
Jump over the changing body navigation to the persistant top navigation

Printer-friendly page

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

Wisconsin Disability Data Table From the 2002 American Community Survey

Estimates for 2002

An estimated 776,000 people in Wisconsin have a disability, or 15.7% of the population age 5 and over. An estimated 112,000 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 Wisconsin
(ages 5 and over)
4,956 776 15.7% 112 2.3%
Disability Type          
Sensory   194   29 15.0%
Mobility   392   99 25.3%
Cognitive   233   51 22.0%
Self-care   112   112  
Leaving the home   224   76 33.9%
Work disability   381   81 21.2%
Gender          
Male 2,449 379 15.5% 46 1.9%
Female 2,506 398 15.9% 66 2.6%
Age          
Children (5-17) 986 71 7.2% 7 0.7%
    5-15 824 54 6.6% 7 0.8%
    16-17 161 17 10.5% 0 0.1%
Working Ages (18-64) 3,312 424 12.8% 56 1.7%
    18-44 2,024 186 9.2% 20 1.0%
    45-64 1,288 238 18.5% 36 2.8%
Elderly (65+) 658 281 42.7% 50 7.6%
    65-74 341 104 30.5% 16 4.8%
    75-84 249 124 49.7% 21 8.3%
    85+ 68 53 78.1% 13 18.4%
Race          
White 4,473 696 15.6% 101 2.3%
African American 278 47 17.0% 8 2.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander 110 17 15.4% 1 0.9%
American Indian/Alaska Native 64 13 20.0% 3 4.1%
Ethnicity          
Hispanic 181 23 12.6% 2 1.4%
Non-Hispanic 4,775 754 15.8% 110 2.3%
Family Income          
In poverty 456 116 25.5% 24 5.2%
Above poverty 4,473 658 14.7% 88 2.0%
Benefit Recipiency          
Social Security (OASDI) 770 343 44.6% 67 8.7%
Supplemental Security Income 68 64 94.8% 19 28.7%
Employment (Ages 18-64)          
Employed 2,546 219 8.6% 11 0.4%
Unemployed (in labor force) 181 29 16.2% 2 1.2%
Not in labor force 583 176 30.1% 42 7.2%
Living Arrangement          
Lives alone 596 182 30.6% 33 5.5%
Lives with others 4,360 594 13.6% 80 1.8%

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

About the Wisconsin 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:

Top

Select from Map
Button: Map of the 50 US states. Choose another state for page.
OR
Select from List