Doctoral Dissertation Research: Disability, Labor Force Participation, and Economic Survival

SES-1003003丹尼斯·霍根朱莉娅·德鲁布朗大学在过去的40年里，美国残疾人的地位发生了巨大变化。许多收容残疾人的国家机构已被拆除，几项重要的民权立法已获通过，规定将残疾人纳入学校和工作场所。针对残疾人的民权立法取得了一些成功：生活在社区中的残疾人比以往任何时候都多，他们的社会福利的某些指标显示出有希望的增长。特别是，在1980年至2000年期间，获得任何大学教育的残疾人比例翻了一番。然而，尽管取得了这些进展，一个令人不安的趋势已经浮出水面。残疾人在20年前比10年前更有可能被雇用，而他们今天被雇用的可能性更小。尽管像2008-09年的经济衰退这样的宏观因素肯定会受到影响，但即使是经济普遍繁荣的时期--比如20世纪90年代中后期？残疾人就业率急剧下降。怎么会这样？该项目要求：1）为什么残疾人的就业率如此之低，为什么在教育程度（就业的主要预测因素）越来越好的情况下，就业率却越来越低; 2）谁是工作的残疾人的少数群体，什么似乎可以解释他们的相对成功; 3）工作的入口和出口是什么情况; 4）如此普遍的失业对残疾人的生活有什么影响; 5）失业的大多数人如何实现经济生存？该项目通过解释体制限制和机会的长期变化如何影响残疾人的就业和教育经历，为残疾问题的中级社会学理论作出贡献。本项目通过定性和定量相结合的方法回答这些问题。定性方法包括对居住在罗得岛和马萨诸塞州的残疾人进行深入访谈，参与者观察和文本材料分析。定量方法包括分别对1969-2008年全国健康访谈调查和1996-2004年收入和计划参与调查进行的多元混合效应和事件历史分析。 更广泛的影响。该项目有助于实现2006年联合国残疾人权利国际公约所概述的目标，研究为什么美国残疾人经历如此严重和持续的失业水平，以及对他们日常生活的影响。调查结果将为公共政策提供信息，以促进残疾人融入美国社会。项目调查结果还将提供关于旨在改善边缘化公民生活的公共政策为何失败的普遍理解。最后，该项目极大地促进了关于工作和残疾的跨学科文献，其中缺乏社会学视角。

SES-1003003Dennis HoganJulia DrewBrown UniversityOver the past 40 years, the status of people with disabilities in the U.S. has changed dramatically. Many state institutions housing people with disabilities have been dismantled and several important pieces of civil rights legislation have passed, mandating the inclusion of people with disabilities in schools and workplaces. Civil rights legislation targeting people with disabilities has had some success: More people with disabilities live in the community than ever before, and certain indicators of their social wellbeing show promising growth. In particular, the share of people with disabilities attaining any college education doubled between 1980 and 2000. Despite these gains, however, a troubling trend has surfaced. People with disabilities were more likely to be employed 20 years ago than they were 10 years ago, and they are even less likely to be employed today. Although macro-level forces like the 2008-09 recession are surely implicated, even times of widespread economic prosperity - like the mid- to late-1990s ? saw sharply declining employment among people with disabilities. How can this be?This project asks: 1) why is there such low employment among people with disabilities and why is it getting worse while educational attainment, the primary predictor of employment, is getting better; 2) who comprises the minority of people with disabilities that work and what seems to explain their relative success; 3) what circumstances surround work entrances and exits; 4) what effects does such widespread unemployment have on the lives of people with disabilities; and 5) what does the unemployed majority do to accomplish economic survival? This project contributes to mesolevel sociological theories of disability by explaining how long-run changes in institutional constraints and opportunities have affected the employment and educational experiences of people with disabilities. This project answers these questions through a combination of qualitative methods and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods include in-depth interviews with people with disabilities living in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, participant observation, and analysis of textual materials. Quantitative methods include multivariate mixed effects and event history analyses of the 1969-2008 National Health Interview Surveys and the 1996-2004 Surveys of Income and Program Participation, respectively. Broader Impacts. This project contributes to the goals outlined by the 2006 U.N. international convention on the rights of people with disabilities by examining why Americans with disabilities experience such severe and persistent levels of unemployment, and the consequences it has for their day-to-day lives. Findings will inform public policies to advance the inclusion of people with disabilities into U.S. society. Project findings will also provide generalizable understandings of why public policies designed to improve the lives of marginalized citizens fail. Last, this project contributes significantly to the interdisciplinary literature on work and disability, in which sociological perspectives have been absent.