severe to interfere with work and other activities is, of course, substantially less, but still very large. Approximately 30 million people have severe disabilities; their distribution is shown in Table 3.2 (Elkind, 1990).

People with disabilities find it much more difficult to be gainfully employed than do people who are able-bodied, and their earning power is thereby much diminished. The rate of unemployment among disabled people who would like to work is several times higher than the national average (Kraus and Stoddard, 1989). The percentage of people who live below the poverty line in the United States is between two and three times greater for people with a disability that interferes with their ability to work than for the total working-age population (Vachon, 1990). As a result, 50 percent of the disabled population have an annual household income at or below $15,000, principally derived from social security, public assistance, and other transfer programs. Almost half of the disabled population live at or near the poverty level. Maintenance support programs cost approximately $100 billion per year, and this has doubled in the last 10 years (Vanderheiden, 1990). Other economic costs of disability, such as lost productivity, are even greater.

The population of people with disabilities can, however, also be viewed as an underutilized resource for the country. Although nationwide employment is relatively high, the workforce is growing much more slowly than it has in the past (Rauch, 1989; Vaughan and Berryman, 1989). Some economists are concerned that, as a consequence of the slowdown in the number of people entering the workforce and the alarming statistics on school dropout rates and academic achievement, the country's workforce could be inadequate