With October being U.S. National Disability Employment Awareness Month and the average monthly Social Security disability benefit standing at only $1,151.79, a figure barely enough to keep an individual out of poverty, the personal-finance website WalletHub released its report on 2021’s Best & Worst Cities for People with Disabilities.
In order to ease the process of finding the best place to live while managing a disability, WalletHub compared more than 180 U.S. cities across 34 key indicators of disability-friendliness.
The metrics used included data such as wheelchair-accessible facilities per capita to rate of workers with disabilities to quality of public hospital system.
From the metrics, the best cities for people with disabilities are:
1. Overland Park, KS
2. Scottsdale, AZ
3. St. Louis, MO
4. Minneapolis, MN
5. Denver, CO 177. Mobile, AL
6. Rochester, NY
7. Yonkers, NY
8. Huntington Beach, CA
9. San Francisco, CA
10. Tucson, AZ
In contrast, the three worst cities were determined to be: Bridgeport, CT, Providence, RI, and Gulfport, MS.
Behind the figures there are some interesting outcomes. For example, Cleveland, Ohio, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, have the highest share of people with disabilities living in the area. This stands at 20 percent. The proportion is 3.6 times higher than in Irvine, California (the city with the lowest at 6 percent).
When poverty is considered, Overland Park, Kansas, has the lowest share of people with disabilities living in poverty. This is at 9 percent and stands at 5 times lower than in Rochester, New York, which is the city with the highest at 45 percent.
From the economic perspective, the assessment finds that Pearl City, Hawaii, has the highest median annual earnings for people with disabilities, $40,321. This stands as which is five times higher than in Burlington, Vermont, the city with the lowest at $8,522.
Commenting on the findings, Shanna K. Kattari, Ph.D., MEd, CSE, ACS – Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, notes: “Most people do not realize that while some places tout that they employ people with disabilities…they pay these employees far less than minimum wage, solely because they are disabled.”#
The academic also observes that the COVID-19 situation has been especially challenging: “With the pandemic, many people with disabilities got accommodations to work from home/take classes from home that they had been asking for over years. This was bittersweet – it was excellent that they were finally able to do these things, but frustrating that they had always been told it was impossible…until the whole world moved online, seemingly overnight and many are forcing disabled people to choose between going back in person to the office/classroom, or quitting, which is a ridiculous choice to have to make.”
