Fifteen Eighty Four

In 2016, the Harriet Tubman Collective—a group of Black disabled activists and community organizers—released a statement titled “Disability Solidarity: Completing the Vision for Black Lives.” The statement was a clear and uncompromising demand for inclusion:

“We are not an afterthought. We are here. We are fighting for all of our lives. We are Black. We are Disabled. We are Deaf.”

The statement was signed by established and emerging leaders in the disability justice movement: Patty Berne, Talila A. Lewis, Leroy F. Moore, Jr., Vilissa Thompson, and others.

“Disability Solidarity” was not just a call to action. It was a declaration of leadership.

As researchers at Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, we read “Disability Solidarity” with great interest. We began to study the disability justice movement and listen to its Black disabled leaders.

We realized that economists needed to be listening, too.

That’s why we wrote Stratification Economics and Disability Justice.

Disability Is Not a Niche Topic

Too often, economists consider disability to be a niche topic. Many don’t consider disability at all. For instance, the first eight books in Cambridge Studies in Stratification Economics: Economics and Social Identity rarely mention disability-related disparities. Ableism—a word that describes systemic forces of oppression and advantage on the basis of bodily and mental ability—doesn’t appear anywhere in the series.

Yet, in the United States, people with disabilities face sharply unequal outcomes across a range of social and economic measures. For example, disabled Americans experience, on average, lower socioeconomic status than their nondisabled peers, as indicated by lower earnings, income, and wealth, lower homeownership, lower educational attainment, and higher poverty.

More than 44 million people, or 13.4% of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population, lived with one or more disabilities in 2022, according to the US. Census Bureau. Data from the World Health Organization indicates that 1.3 billion people experience significant disability, comprising 16 percent of the global population.

To address economic disparities on this scale, impacting such a significant number of people, we turned to an emerging subfield of economics focused on intergroup inequality: stratification economics

Stratification Economics and Disability Justice

William A. Darity Jr. introduced stratification economics in a 2005 lecture as a framework for analyzing “structural and intentional processes generating hierarchy and, correspondingly, income and wealth inequality between ascriptively distinguished groups.” (In this context, “ascriptive” refers to social or economic status that is assigned on the basis of predetermined factors such as race, gender, caste, or disability.) As Darity and colleagues argue, the goal of stratification economics is to understand intergroup disparity as a product not only of the labor market, but also of “wealth, health, psychological wellbeing, political influence, and social inclusion.”

Stratification economics has already transformed how economists understand race- and caste-based inequality. We believe it holds similar transformative potential for our understanding of disability-based inequality, but only if we analyze the economic effects of ableism as a form of group-based stratification that operates often in conjunction with racism and misogyny.

In Stratification Economics and Disability Justice, we take our cues for this effort from leaders in the disability justice movement. Our approach centers the lived experiences of Black disabled people through the public writing, speaking, and organizing of these activists. Alongside their witness we present evidence of intergoup disparities on the basis of disability across economic and social areas, including employment, health, wealth, and education.

We also offer solutions. Each chapter recommends updated qualitative and quantitative research methods for economists studying the intersection of ableism, racism, and misogyny. The conclusion of each chapter suggests disability-inclusive changes to canonical public policy proposals in the field stratification economics: a federal “Baby Bonds” program and a Federal Jobs Guarantee.

We wrote Stratification Economics and Disability Justice to intervene in a growing field, guide economists in their study of disability-based inequality, and recommend public policies for greater disability justice.

More than anything, we wrote Stratification Economics and Disability Justice as an invitation to economists to learn from disability justice activists.

Won’t you join us?

Adam Hollowell is Senior Research Associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and director of the Inequality Studies minor at Duke University. He is a co-author, with Jamie McGhee, of You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge (2022) and a contributor to The Pandemic Divide: How COVID Increased Inequality in America (2022).

Keisha Bentley-Edwards is the Associate Director of Research and Director of the Health Equity Working Group for the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Duke University. She is also the Co-Director of Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute for Equity in Research.