Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Disability by Health Condition

Among adults ages 40 and older, non-Hispanic Asians reported the lowest rates of disability-related health conditions in 2021 while those in the non-Hispanic Black and Other race categories had the highest rates.

In 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) reintroduced questions on health conditions related to disability that can help us better understand the conditions that contribute to disability and how they vary by sex, race, ethnicity and education.

The data show patterns in health-related disability among adults age 40 and older and key differences by sex, race and Hispanic origin.

Among findings:

• Women were more likely than men to have health conditions that limited their daily activities (Figure 1).
  
  
• Asian (non-Hispanic) adults reported the lowest rates (17.2%) of disability-related health conditions.
  
  
• Black (non-Hispanic) adults (31.8%) and those reporting Other or multiple-race non-Hispanic identity (42.9%) were among those with higher rates.

The SIPP data provide insight into how health conditions contribute to disability. They do not provide prevalence estimates of health conditions within the population. Rather, these data tell us how often each condition is cited as a source of functional limitation among those reporting any type of disability.

For this analysis, we focused on three: arthritis, diabetes and hypertension (high blood pressure).

Some findings by race and ethnicity:

• Black (non-Hispanic) adults had significantly higher levels than non-Hispanic White adults of all three of these disability-related conditions (Figure 2). For example, disability-related hypertension was about three times as common among non-Hispanic Black adults (3.5%) than non-Hispanic White adults (1.2%).
  
  
• Hispanic individuals had higher levels of disability-related diabetes (3.2%) and hypertension (2.7%) and lower levels of arthritis (3.9%) than non-Hispanic White adults.
  
  
• Asian (non-Hispanic) respondents reported lower levels of arthritis than all other groups.

These disability-related health conditions varied by educational attainment among adults age 40 and over: the higher the level of education, the lower the rates of all three health conditions (Figure 3).

Respondents with a high school diploma or GED were about twice as likely to have a disability-related condition (31.7%) as those with a bachelor’s degree or higher (16.3%).

Those who did not complete high school fared the worst: 40.9% reported a health condition contributing to disability – and diabetes and hypertension rates were both about six times higher among people who did not finish high school than among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.