Numbers game: Disabled ambitions

The study, The Education and Employment of Disabled Young People: Frustrated Ambition, which was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, discovered that although disabled young people share the same aspirations in their lives as their non-disabled peers, they are four times more likely to be unemployed, and have earnings that are 11 per cent lower, despite equal qualifications.

The report analysed data on young people born in 1970 and the early 1980s and found that aspirations were similar for all 16-year-olds. When asked how they saw themselves in five years, 7.6 per cent of 4,495 able-bodied young people said studying, compared with 25 per cent of disabled young people, and 35 per cent of able-bodied young people said in a profession, compared with 23.8 per cent of disabled young people. But when the study looked at where young people actually were, disabled young people were three times more likely to become unemployed at age 18 and four times more likely at age 26.