Contextualising Income-Based Poverty Measurement: The Needs-Based Cost of Childhood Disability in Belgium

Prior studies show that children with disabilities are more likely to grow up in poverty compared to children without disabilities. Yet, income-based poverty indicators do not accurately represent the standard of living for disabled children as they fail to account for the additional out-of-pocket costs incurred by the child’s disability. This study is the first to measure the needs-based costs for families with disabled children in Flanders (Belgium) to better understand their standard of living. We develop reference budgets for four hypothetical families with a seven-year-old child with cerebral palsy, an intellectual disability, and/or autism spectrum disorder. We draw on guidelines and recommendations, existing scientific knowledge, interviews with 19 disability professionals and 15 parents of disabled children, and a follow-up questionnaire for parents. The reference budgets allow us to estimate the needs-based cost of childhood disability and establish a threshold that represents a minimum standard of living for families with disabled children that is not driven by constraints of affordability, availability or accessibility. The results show that the minimum costs for the children with disabilities are 1.7 to 2.5 times higher than those needed to raise a non-disabled child. The additional monthly costs range from €516 to €1,087. They are higher when children attend inclusive education and childcare without access to subsidised care services, and lower when specialised education and childcare are combined with subsidised care services. Moreover, the European income-based at-risk-of-poverty threshold underestimates what the families with a disabled child minimally need to spend to adequately participate in society.