Wage Discrimination Against Workers with Sensory Disabilities

• Author: Chung Choe,Marjorie L. Baldwin
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Published date: 01 January 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12048

Wage Discrimination Against Workers with

Sensory Disabilities*

MARJORIE L. BALDWIN and CHUNG CHOE

We link information on occupation-specific job demands to data from the Survey

of Income and Program Participation to provide first-ever estimates of wage dis-

crimination against workers with sensory disabilities. Estimates are derived from

wage models that control for job demands related to sensory abilities, and interac-

tions between job demands and workers’sensory limitations. Results indicate

approximately one third (one tenth) of the male (female) disability-related wage

differential is potentially attributed to discrimination. The results differ from esti-

mates of discrimination against workers with physical disabilities obtained with

similar methods, underscoring the importance of accounting for heterogeneity of

the disabled population in discrimination studies.

Introduction

EMPLOYERS CONSISTENTLY RATE COMMUNICATION SKILLS AMONG THE MOST

IMPORTANT factors they consider in evaluating current or potential employees

(Mitchell, McMahon, and McKee 2005). It is not surprising, therefore, to find

that persons with sensory (hearing, speech, vision) disabilities have poorer out-

comes in the labor market than nondisabled persons. Although persons with

sensory disabilities represent 5.5 percent of the U.S. population aged 21–64,

they make up only 3.4 percent of the employed population (Brault 2008).

Among those who are working, median earnings are 71 percent of the median

earnings of nondisabled persons (Brault 2008). Compared to nondisabled per-

sons, persons with sensory disabilities experience lower rates of promotion,

*The authors’affiliations are, respectively, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Email: Marjorie.

Baldwin@asu.edu; Research Fellow, Korea Information Society Development Institute., Email:

choechung@kisdi.re.kr.

JEL: J71, I14.

*The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Ronald Oaxaca (University of Arizona), from

conference participants at the 2012 meetings of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), from

seminar participants at Centre d’Etudes de Populations, de Pauvret

e et de Politiques Socio-Economiques /

International Networks for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development (CEPS/INSTEAD)

and from two anonymous referees. Parts of this research were completed while Dr. Choe was employed at

CEPS/INSTEAD.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Vol. 53, No. 1 (January 2014). ©2013 Regents of the University of California

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

101

less job stability, and a tendency to be underemployed relative to their educa-

tion and work experience (Kaye 2009; Klein and Hood 2004).

In studies of disability-related wage discrimination persons with sensory

disabilities would typically be included together with persons who have

physical and mental disabilities. However, there are good reasons to consider

sensory disabilities, which represent about 25 percent of the disabled popula-

tion aged 21-64, in a separate analysis (Brault 2008). First, sensory disabili-

ties are highly visible even in a casual encounter, making discrimination by

prejudiced employers, coworkers, and customers fairly easy. Second, sensory

disabilities affect basic communication functions that are important in almost

every job, making it difficult for persons with sensory disorders to sort

themselves into jobs for which their limitations do not affect productivity.

Finally, persons with sensory disabilities have even poorer labor market out-

comes than most other disabled groups. After controlling for severity differ-

ences, for example, employment rates are 37 percent for persons with

speech disorders, 41 percent for vision disorders, and 59 percent for hearing

disorders, compared with 68 percent for disabled groups overall (Brault

2008).

The adverse employment outcomes experienced by workers with sensory

disabilities are surely explained, at least in part, by the negative effects of poor

communication skills on worker productivity, but disability-related discrimina-

tion may also play a part. Rankings of attitudes toward different health condi-

tions indicate the average individual is uncomfortable interacting with persons

who have serious difficulty hearing, seeing, or speaking (Westbrook, Legge,

and Pennay 1993). The intensity of stigma is strong enough to suggest workers

with sensory disabilities may be subject to discrimination, yet no empirical

studies have applied rigorous econometric methods to estimate the potential

impact of discrimination specifically for this group.

Following the approach we used in a prior study focusing on physical dis-

abilities (Baldwin and Choe unpublished data) we apply an enhanced decom-

position technique and an expanded set of productivity controls to estimate

the potential impact of discrimination on the wages of persons with sensory

disabilities. We merge data from three years of the Survey of Income and

Program Participation (SIPP) to data on job demands for sensory abilities

derived from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and include

the job demands variables in the wage models upon which our estimates are

based. We also include interaction effects between job demands and workers’

sensory limitations, where the interaction terms are interpreted as measures of

the extent to which sensory disorders affect important functions of a worker’s

job.

102 / MARJORIE L. BALDWIN AND CHUNG CHOE