Home mortgages, retirement accounts, the college tuition for loved ones, building a more financially secure future for one’s self and one’s family, this is why Americans go to work. The 4th century philosopher Galen is credited with stating, “work is nature’s medicine,” which often proves true, but assets, the promise of a better future for our children, are nature’s motivator and if messaged properly should be the ultimate employment incentive and the first step in changing the economic expectation of people with disabilities.

Through asset building principles, people with disabilities can own their own homes, fund retirement accounts, continue economically empowering educations and even start a business. These kinds of outcomes are nearly absent from the current discussion within the disability community. There is an unspoken relationship between asset building and employment. Earnings from employment are necessary to participate in most asset building programs, but by the same token, asset building outcomes, that home, retirement account and personal autonomy, encourage and motivate people to risk employment.

As October ushers in another disability employment month, it is critical to recognize that for people with disabilities, employment outcomes have not improved over the last twenty years, even with the passage of the ADA. According to current estimates, there are over 50 million people in the United States with a disability, a group projected over the next several decades to grow faster than any other minority group. According to recent Social Security Administration (SSA) data, approximately 12 million individuals directly rely on Social Security disability benefits as their largest if not sole source of income. According to the National Organization on Disability 2010 Harris poll, people with disabilities still do not fully participate in all aspects of society. According to the survey authors, employment represents the largest difference between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. Of all working-age people with disabilities, only 21% say that they are employed, compared to 59% of people without disabilities – a gap of 38 percentage points representing a nearly threefold difference. Of course, without employment, or with chronic underemployment, people with disabilities also report extreme incidence of poverty. People with disabilities are more than twice as likely as people without disabilities to report that they have a household income of $15,000 or less (34% versus 15%). People with disabilities are more than half as likely as people without disabilities to say that they live in households that earn more than $50,000 annually (18% versus 38%). These low-income people with disabilities, more so than any other minority group, rely on Social Security for their income security and stability.

A recent report by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy reports that people with a disability tend to be older than persons with no disability, reflecting the increased incidence of disability with age. In 2009, almost half of people with a disability were age 65 and over; large numbers of this cohort likely rely on Social Security for a significant portion of their income. As the trend continues, we can expect the disability population to swell as the baby boom generation continues to age. The nexus between aging boomers and disability onset will result in increased reliance on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for income stability and health care for many more millions of Americans across ethnic and gender lines.

To support and plan for these demographic certainties, it is crucial to not only empower this particular disability quartile but also provide younger people with disabilities access to information, tools and strategies to increase their employment outcomes and so strengthen the system for individuals and families in all generations. Since its inception, the World Institute on Disability has recognized that employment and economic opportunity are linked, not only with one and other, but with the ultimate goal of achieving full social participation of people with disabilities.  More than two decades ago, WID’s founder, Ed Roberts, spoke to this very point: “We can only really be free and take our place in this society if we have economic freedom, which means careers. I remember we used to talk to employers about hiring people with disabilities as a moral issue: it was a charitable thing to do. Now, we have the ADA and there are companies like McDonald's who are hiring many people with disabilities. I once met the president of McDonald's and asked him why he hired disabled people. "Because it's good for my bottom line," he said. "We have found that people with disabilities are loyal workers." This is how it is today. People with disabilities want to work. We have converted our approach from asking to be hired out of sympathy to marketing ourselves as a significant employee pool, and a consumer pool as well. This is the legacy of the disability civil rights movement.”

Today, WID works with growing numbers of young people with disabilities who are shifting their view of government benefit programs from an “early retirement mode” to the concept of “employment supports” which can build a more secure employment, benefits and financial future for themselves and their families. It is critical to the survival of the Social Security system that people with disabilities be recognized as part of the dialogue, not just as benefit recipients, but as full partners charged with the responsibility of being part of the solution. From a practical perspective, this means getting people, particularly young people, with disabilities to work, not only to improve their own financial and economic outcomes, but to help secure the financial viability of the nation’s social safety net. The Social Security Administration is a federal agency under siege and stress from both documented demographic factors and administrative burdens threatening its fabric. In 2008 and 2009 combined, largely as a result of the current economic malaise, SSA received 1,000,000 more applications for disability benefits than its own SSA actuaries had predicted.

The time is now to view employment of people with disabilities differently and consider both the personal and policy opportunities provided by asset building to affect these outcomes. For years, the asset building community has been leading the charge to modify or remove restrictive asset limits in programs such as SSI. A $2,000 asset limit is not only a clear and obvious disincentive to savings and related behavioral outcomes. A less discussed result of such policies is the effect on employment.  The inability to accumulate even basic assets discourages employment and even the effort to try. When the accumulation of earnings can threaten ones income and medical safety net, often the logical, rational decision is to simply give up.

The nexus between employment and asset limits is understood by the asset building community. Recently, at the 2010 assets Learning Conference, CFED scheduled and organized 777 Capitol Hill visits, many of which focused on modifying asset limits, to encourage employment and savings for people with disabilities via the 2010 SSI Savers Act. Asset building and its attendant tools and strategies represent an underutilized and under discussed opportunity within the disability community for people to improve their employment and economic lives.

It is simply time for the disability community to recognize and demand economic inclusion. Opportunities to save earnings like other Americans, mandated inclusion of people with disabilities in asset building through funding mechanisms, qualitative on-going financial and investing education, targeted employment of people with disabilities, rational work incentive policies made accessible to people with disabilities and employer incentives are all crucial elements in changing outcomes. The disability community, its leaders, supporters and policy makers have the obligation to work together with the asset building community and in bipartisan ways, both across political differences and disability agendas, to begin to change the economic expectation of people with disabilities.