DisabilityStatistics.org is a free source of disability-related statistics and estimates. You can use the information at DisabilityStatistics.org to shape policy, make decisions, or request funding so that people with disabilities are more fully included in the workplace and community.

For more about the 2025 relaunch of the DisabilityStatistics.org website, read DisabilityStatistics.org Offers Visualization and Local Data and Bill Erickson Has a Spreadsheet with 3.2 Million Rows.

DisabilityStatistics.org is published by the Northeast ADA Center, which is one of ten regional ADA Centers in the United States. The Northeast ADA Center aims to educate and empower all ADA stakeholders throughout New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands to increase their knowledge of the ADA and to support them to include people with disabilities in local communities and to implement the ADA in their own lives, workplaces, businesses, and communities.

The Northeast ADA Center is housed in the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability, which is part of the Cornell University ILR School. The Yang-Tan Institute works toward a world where people with disabilities are fully included in the workplace and community by advancing knowledge, policies, and practice that enhance equal opportunities for all people with disabilities.

The annual Disability Status Reports summarize the most recent demographic and economic statistics on the non-institutionalized US population with disabilities at the state and national level. They are aimed at policymakers, disability advocates, and reporters. The reports contain information on population size and disability prevalence for various demographic subpopulations, as well as statistics related to employment, earnings, and household income. Comparisons are made to people without disabilities and across disability types. Disability Status Reports are available for each state, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.

The reports focus primarily on the working-age population because the employment gap between people with and without disabilities is a major focus of government programs and advocacy efforts. Further, employment is a key factor in the social integration and economic self-sufficiency of working-age people with disabilities. In the future, we will add health-related statistics.

The estimates in the Disability Status Reports are based on analysis of the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). For additional disability-focused information in the ACS, see A Guide to Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (2008 Forward).

The annual Disability Status Reports are available for download from this site. On the home page, use the menus to choose a specific state, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or the entire United States. You can also choose a year dating back to 2008.

Note: There was no ACS data from 2020, so there is no corresponding annual report. See Where are the 2020 ACS estimates?

Where are the 2020 ACS estimates?

The Census Bureau did not release its standard ACS 1-year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data in 2020 because the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantially lower response rates and a non-response bias that could affect the accuracy of estimates. The 2020 ACS 1-year estimates did not meet the Census Bureau’s Statistical Data Quality Standards designed to ensure the utility, objectivity, and integrity of the statistical information.

For more information, see Census Bureau Announces Changes for 2020 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. Below are a few pertinent excerpts from this document:

The COVID-19 pandemic posed numerous challenges to collecting ACS data in 2020, as described in our recent Adapting the American Community Survey Amid COVID-19 blog. As a result, the ACS collected only two-thirds of the responses it usually collects in a survey year and the people who did respond to the survey had significantly different social, economic and housing characteristics from those who did not. This is called “nonresponse bias.”

Specifically, Census Bureau staff found high nonresponse from people with lower income, lower educational attainment, and who were less likely to own their home. Nonresponse bias is a natural part of sample surveys, and often statisticians can adjust for nonresponse bias by giving more weight to responses from underrepresented groups. However, Census Bureau staff found that standard nonresponse adjustments to the ACS 1-year estimates could not fully address the differences in a way that meets Census Bureau quality standards.

Because of the underlying quality concerns, the Census Bureau urges caution in using the experimental estimates as a replacement for standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates. Users should evaluate the estimates and alternatives to determine if they are suited for their needs. To create these estimates, the Census Bureau will apply an alternative set of weights to the 2020 ACS data to attempt to adjust for some of the nonresponse bias.