Housing is an expense that often uses much of a family’s income. Families face a housing cost burden when they spend 30% or more of their income on housing. In 2023, people with disabilities in 13 states were 1.7 times or more likely to experience housing cost burden, when compared to people without disabilities. In other words, in 2023, 7 of every 20 people with disabilities spent 30% or more of their income on housing while only 5 out of 20 people without disabilities spent 30% or more of their income on housing. This tells us that economic trends, like increases in housing costs, affect people with and without disabilities differently. This big difference shows that it is hard for people with disabilities to pay for their homes.
This difference in relative cost could be for a number of reasons. First, in 2023, people with disabilities’ typical (median) earnings was nearly $10,000 less than that of people without disabilities. On average (mean), earnings for people with disabilities was over $15,000 less than that for people without disabilities. Typical workers with disabilities make less money than people without disabilities. High earning people with disabilities make even less money than high earners without disabilities. Also, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, median housing costs rose from $1,354 per month in 2022 to $1,406 per month in 2023, adjusted for inflation[1]. This affected people with disabilities more because of their lower average income. Additionally, people with disabilities are limited to homes that are adapted for their use. This means that they have fewer options for available housing, and those that are available can be more expensive as a result of their particular needs. All of these impacts result in people with disabilities spending more of their money on housing.
The following map tells us how much more or less of their money people with disabilities spend on housing compared to those without disabilities in each state of the United States.
Housing cost burden for people with disabilities compared to people without disabilities
Map Description: The map helps us see how people with disabilities spend on housing compared to those without disabilities. It uses shades to show the difference in risk of experiencing housing cost burden between people with and without disabilities. In Florida, for example, people with disabilities have only a small increase in risk of experiencing housing cost burden (1.3 times more). But in North Dakota, people with disabilities are much more likely to experience housing cost burden (2.2 times more), compared to people without disabilities. The information for this map comes from Section 7 Table 7.4 Home Environment - Civilians with and without Disabilities Ages 18 to 64 Years Living in the Community Experiencing Housing Cost Burden for the United States and States: 2023.
Disability statistics help teach everyone about the lives of people with disabilities. These statistics help check how well government programs work and suggest changes to people who make the rules.
The Annual Disability Statistics Compendium is a collection of important information about people with disabilities in each state of the United States. It includes data from multiple government agencies and programs. The Compendium gathers these statistics together, making it easy for everyone to find and use.
In the Compendium, you can find information like:
The total number of people with disabilities in the United States.
The number of people with disabilities who are employed.
The count of people with disabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security Disability Insurance.
Along with the Compendium, you can access the following documents:
The Annual Report for People with Disabilities in America: This report uses data from the American Community Survey to show changes in employment, education, health care, and financial stability among people with disabilities over the years.
The Annual Disability Statistics Compendium Build Your Own Statistics: This is a web interface developed to communicate more specific disability statistics.
New This Year
Expansion A was produced in collaboration with our partners at the American Foundation for the Blind, Dr. Sarahelizabeth Baguhn and Dr. Arielle Silverman. It collates the statistics from across the Compendium about people with vision difficulties as defined by the American Community Survey (see “Notes on the Data” below for more information) into one section. People with vision difficulties span across blindness and low vision, resulting in a diverse range of life impacts, making this population especially heterogeneous. We encourage readers to explore the ways their experiences mirror or diverge from the broader population measured as shown in these tables.
Notes on the Data
The Compendium is a collection of information gathered from various places like the Social Security Administration (SSA), Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), and others. Most, but not all, of these data sources are updated yearly. We use the most recent data available.
The Compendium uses the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for most of its tables. The ACS uses six questions to figure out if a person has a disability. Each question has two possible answers: “Yes,” or “No.”
Within this data, a response of “Yes” to any of the questions means that the person has a disability. The six types of disability are vision, hearing, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, and independent living.
| Disability Type |
|---|
| Hearing |
| Vision |
| Cognitive |
| Ambulatory |
| Self-Care |
| Independent Living |
Sometimes, the categories we use don’t give us all the details we might want. For example, the cognitive disability category doesn’t tell us whether the disability is related to a brain injury or a developmental disability.
About the Tables
Understanding how many people are in a group is important, but it’s also important to know how certain we are about that information. Survey data rely on the answers of some people to predict the total population in each group. For this reason, all statistics are estimates or best predictions. We also provide a second number for each survey estimate called the margin of error that can be used to calculate the range of numbers possible for any single estimate. The margin of error can help you understand the uncertainty in the collected information. For example, the larger the margin of error, the more likely it is that our best guess is higher or lower than the true number.
To make the comparison between two groups (people with and without disabilities) clearer, in most cases, we have added relative ratios to our tables. Relative ratios make it easier to compare groups of different sizes. If the relative ratio is higher than one, in the Compendium, this generally means that a larger group of people with disabilities are experiencing something compared to people without disabilities.
Additional Resources
Build your own disability statistics at Build Your Own Statistics.
Find individual reports at https://researchondisability.org/.
Access our FAQ (frequently asked questions) page at https://researchondisability.org/faq
For help finding or interpreting specific statistics, please email us at disability.statistics@unh.edu or call (866) 538-9521.
Suggested Citation. Thomas, N., Bach, S., & Houtenville, A. (2025). Annual Disability Statistics Compendium: 2025 Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, Institute on Disability.
[1] US Census Bureau. (2024, September 12). Nearly Half of Renter Households Are Cost-Burdened, Proportions Differ by Race. Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/renter-households-cost-burdened-race.html