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Disability and Life Satisfaction in Italy

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Abstract

During the last decades, the socio-economic policy agenda has devoted an increasing attention to the inclusion of disabled people into society. It follows that understanding the drivers of life outcomes and conditions of disabled people is essential to analyze the sources of disadvantaged positions.

This paper brings evidence on the predictors of life satisfaction of disabled people in Italy, focusing on four specific dimensions (relations with relatives and friends, economic conditions, and leisure time) and analyzing information on people with functional limitations and health problems, as provided by the 2011 ISTAT survey.

Estimation results show that household structure, health and disability status affect life satisfaction more significantly than personal and income variables. Education attainments significantly affect satisfaction with the economic conditions. In addition, support in daily activities may increase satisfaction with economic conditions and leisure time, suggesting that providing non-monetary support would be effective in increasing life satisfaction, especially in those domains requiring freedom of movement. Finally, we find that older disabled people are, on average, more satisfied than younger disabled people, while gender is relevant when interacted with the household type.

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Notes

  1. For further information, see Ministero del Lavoro (2012).

  2. See for example Plagnol and Easterlin 2008; Dolan et al. 2008.

  3. See for example Salinas-Jimenez et al. 2013.

  4. See for example Le and Miller 2013.

  5. See for example Kim and Kim 2013.

  6. It is available at www.disabilitaincifre.it

  7. For more information on the sampling design, see ISTAT (2011) “Nota metodologica Indagine ‘Inclusione sociale delle persone con limitazioni funzionali’”, http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/77546.

  8. The software employed for the statistical analysis and the empirical models is Stata 13.

  9. Approximating the level of disability using information on limitations in daily activities is in the spirit of the social model of disability, for which disability is defined according to the interaction of the disabled individual with his/her impairments and/or health problems, and with the external environment (including technical and facility supports).

  10. The degree of correlation among this set of control variables is rather limited and never exceeds 0.47.

  11. The 2012 ISTAT survey ‘Aspects of Daily Life’ is potentially useful to investigate life satisfaction of both disabled and non-disabled people (ISTAT 2012). However, we rely on the 2011 ISTAT Survey on ‘Not Self Sufficient Individuals’ Social Inclusion’, because of the availability of more specific variables concerning disability and supports to disabled people.

  12. An advantage of using the APE is given by their better stability when compared with estimated parameters to the presence of uncontrolled unobservable factors.

  13. We run auxiliary specifications including additional control variables referred to social participation and cultural aspects. These variables have usually resulted not significant, with some exceptions when focusing on satisfaction with leisure time. In any case main explanatory variables remained quite stable when controlling for those additional variables. Auxiliary estimation results are available upon request.

  14. We focus on the level “sufficiently satisfied” as it represents the modal value in the distribution of life satisfaction (with the exception of the economic dimension). The effect of covariates on life satisfaction is sometimes non-linear, and estimation results presented in the Appendix also deserve attention.

  15. Meggiolaro and Ongaro (2014), analyzing a whole sample of Italian elderly people, do not find evidence that single-mothers are less satisfied with their life when compared to other family types, except when compared with couples living alone. In addition, data from the 2012 ISTAT ‘Aspects of Daily Life’ show that, on average, non-disabled single-mothers are more satisfied than disabled single-mothers.

  16. Jones (2010), Thoma et al. (2011).

  17. On the disability wealth penalty and on pensions gap by disability status see McKnight (2014).

  18. There is a wide literature suggesting a higher risk to be excluded from paid work for disabled people. Within the disabled population, individuals with mental health problems show a significant lower access to the labour market (Jones et al. 2006a, b; Addabbo et al. 2014).

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Acknowledgments

This paper is part of the research activities carried out within the PRIN research project “Measuring human development and capabilities in Italy: methodological and empirical issues” (prot. 2009NM89S5_004), by the Pescara and Modena units. It has been presented at the PRIN workshop in the Department of Economics of Pescara, 22–23 April 2013, at the X Jornadas de Economía Laboral held in Madrid in July 2013, at the AIEL conference on Labour Economics held in Rome in September 2013, at the SIE annual congress held in Bologna in October 2013, and at the conference on “Care, Health and Well-being” held in Faro in January 2014. We thank the participants for the stimulating comments provided on the previous versions of this paper. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees for their useful comments. The usual disclaimers apply. All errors and omissions are those of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics “Marco Biagi”, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Via Università 4, 41121, Modena, Italy

    Tindara Addabbo

  2. Department of Economics and Communication, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Via Università 4, 41121, Modena, Italy

    Elena Sarti

  3. Department of Economic Studies, University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Viale Pindaro 42, 65127, Pescara, Italy

    Dario Sciulli

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  1. Tindara Addabbo
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Correspondence to Dario Sciulli.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7 Average satisfaction in four domains: Comparative Analysis
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Table 8 Average partial effects based on ordered probit model estimates: NOT AT ALL SATISFIED
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Table 9 Average partial effects based on ordered probit model estimates: LITTLE SATISFIED
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Table 10 Average partial effects based on ordered probit model estimates: VERY SATISFIED
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Addabbo, T., Sarti, E. & Sciulli, D. Disability and Life Satisfaction in Italy. Applied Research Quality Life 11, 925–954 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-015-9412-0

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