IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxecpp/v77y2025i4p1106-1127..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of education in the disability employment gap

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Bryan
  • Andrew Bryce
  • Jennifer Roberts
  • Cristina Sechel

Abstract

The gap between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people in the UK was 33 percentage points (pp) in 2019. This is partly explained by the fact that disabled people have lower levels of education. To assess the role of education in the disability employment gap (DEG), we decompose this DEG into characteristics and structural components using Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition methods. If the average education levels of disabled people were raised to those of non-disabled people, the DEG could be reduced by 4 pp (12 per cent). This would leave a remaining gap of 11 pp (33 per cent) explained by other characteristics and 18 pp (55 per cent) attributable to structural barriers in the labour market. These results are consistent with other findings in the literature, showing educational inequalities to be an important explanation of the DEG. However, the results also highlight the continued relevance of structural barriers that are disproportionately hindering the employment prospects of disabled people.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Bryan & Andrew Bryce & Jennifer Roberts & Cristina Sechel, 2025. "The role of education in the disability employment gap," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 77(4), pages 1106-1127.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:77:y:2025:i:4:p:1106-1127.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpaf016
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:77:y:2025:i:4:p:1106-1127.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.