Disability and its consequence on consumption: evidence from Ethiopian households

This paper examines the prevalence of disability and its effect on non-health consumption using the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study two-year panel data consisting of 4954 Ethiopian households. The fixed effects model is estimated to analyze the impact of disability on consumption. The disability prevalence rate is as large as 26% of surveyed households. The results show that disability of any degree of severity in any of the six functional domains affects all non-health consumption items except for food while disability coming from a severe degree of difficulty has a larger adverse effect on household consumption of all items, implying both short-run and long-run effects. Comparatively, disability highly hits households from rural areas.