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In a recent edition of the American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Parish, et al. wrote about the financial status of single mothers with children with developmental disabilities (Parish, et al., 2012). This article prompted us to take a look at our data and see what they showed about the financial situations of single parents of children with ID/DD.

We looked at the preliminary results from the NCI survey administration in 2011-2012. We examined the data from the Child Family Survey (CFS), which looks at families with children under the age of 22 with ID/DD living in the home. Most families surveyed for the CFS are receiving Medicare. We then filtered the results so that the data represented only those respondents who were the only parent living in the household (we do not ask the respondent’s gender, so we could not at this time assess whether the respondent was a mother or a father). 

The sample size of single parents from the CFS was 205. Table 1 demonstrates the household income of these respondents.

Table 1: Household income of single parents of children with ID/DD

 As is evident from Table 1, almost 61% of single parent respondents have a household income of less than $15,000 a year. Although shocking, this is not surprising as studies have shown that children with ID/DD often require lifelong care, therefore limiting a parent’s employment opportunities. In addition, families with children with ID/DD often face elevated costs of disability-related care (Parish & Cloud, 2006; Emerson, 2004; Parish, et al., 2004).

Again looking at the single parent respondents to the CFS, we then examined the out-of-pocket expenses. It was very interesting to look at out-of-pocket expenses by household income (Table 2).

Table 2: Out-of-pocket expenses by household income: Single parents of children with ID/DD

 
As can be seen in Table 2, almost 25% of single parents making below $15,000 per year spend $101-$1000 on out-of-pocket expenses related to their child with ID/DD. Also, almost 10% of single parents making below $15,000 per year spend between $1001 and $10,000 on out-of-pocket expenses related to their child with ID/DD.

As is evident from these data, the financial situation of single parents of children with ID/DD is disheartening.  State directors and policy makers can use this data to develop more targeted measures to address the financial well-being of single parents.

Bibliography:

Emerson, E. (2004) Poverty and children with intellectual disabilities in the world’s richer countries. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, 29, 319-338

Parish, S., Seltzer, M., Greenberg, J. & Floyd, F. (2004). Economic implications of caregiving at midlife: Comparing parents with and without children who have developmental disabilities. Mental Retardation, 42(6), 413-426

Parish, S., & Cloud, J. (2006). Financial well-being of young children with disabilities. Social Work, 51 223-323

Parish, S., Rose, R., Swaine, J., Dababnah, S., Mayra, E. (2012) Financial well-being of single, working-age mothers of children with developmental disabilities. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: 117(5): 400-412. Retrieved from http://www.aaiddjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1352/1944-7558-117.5.400

Please note: The 2011-12 data reports will be released and placed on the NCI website this Spring.  For more in depth analysis of previous year’s NCI consumer survey data, please see http://www.nationalcoreindicators.org.