WEAI’s Qin Gao and coauthor Sophia Mitra recently published new research in the journal Global Social Policy titled "Disability and social policy: Global evidence and perspectives" that aims to bring disability more prominently into the global social policy discourse.
The term "disability" is complex and elusive as individuals and cultures often have different understandings of disability. However, modern conceptualizations of disability frame disability as an interactional or relational notion, one that results from an individual with a health condition interacting with structural factors and resources. Structural factors, be they barriers in the physical environment, negative attitudes, discrimination or resources, may and should be addressed by social policies.
Disability has received little attention in the field of global social policy. While there has been research on social protection policies targeting individuals with disability and their families, limited work has considered disability in other areas of global social policy such as education, health, healthcare, and employment. Guided by the human rights perspective, this special issue on the theme of Disability and Social Policy, consisting of seven research articles and a Forum with five essays, brings disability more prominently into the global social policy discourse and aims to facilitate the generation of new empirical evidence and debates about disability-inclusive social policies globally.
Read the full study here.
