International Day of People with Disability - useful data sources

International Day of People with Disability was 3rd December . The official website provides background on the event and a history of key events.

How many people are disabled?

The World Disability report published by the WHO in 2011 recorded over 1 billion worldwide.

It produces individual country surveys which have data on individual nations and there is a world wide global strategy which aims to improve disabled peoples lives from 2014-21

The UN also collects disability statistics 

The Disability Data Portal  was created  for the Global Disability Summit, held on 24 July 2018. It provides an overview of the data globally available on people with disabilities in 40 countries. The portal also identifies gaps in knowledge

The Office for National Statistics collects data for the Uk. It includes education, employment , health care and discrimination. It has a portal

What contribution do disabled people make to the economy?

in 2017 "The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific estimated that if PWD were paid the same as their able bodied peers, the GDP of these countries could increase by 1% to 7%. If we take even the most conservative estimate, that would be an increase in GDP-PPP of approximately $80 billion for ASEAN"

Discrimination
in 2018 the UN published a report on
Disability and Sustainable Development Goals which showed that disabled people were at a significant disadvantage

In the UK a parliamentary debate in 2018 discussed how  increasing the employment of disabled people could increase economic growth. This research briefing from the House of Commons Library sets out the context. This report gives current employment data from 2019. It concludes: People with disabilities were considerably more likely than those without disabilities to be economically inactive. While, the economic inactivity rate for those with disabilities was 43.3%, the corresponding figure for those without disabilities was 15.6%.

The Office for Students has also recently raised concerns that higher education colleges are not doing enough to integrate disabled students. The ONS also has data on increased loneliness and differences in participation in social activities.