Exploring the impact of disability onset on individual and family wellbeing in the UK

Poole, John 2022. Exploring the impact of disability onset on individual and family wellbeing in the UK. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the impact of disability onset upon the subjective wellbeing of working-aged (16-64) individuals in the UK, and its effects upon their spouses and children. A fixed effects estimation, based on a model by Meyer and Mok (2019), is applied to 9 waves of survey data from Understanding Society, recorded between 2009 and 2018. Severity of disability (defined by the number of areas of life an individual has substantial difficulties with) is found to be the largest driver of changes in subjective wellbeing following disability onset. Short-term but severe disabilities are associated with a decline of around half a point on a 7-point life satisfaction scale in the onset year. Having a chronic (long-term) disability alone is not associated with wellbeing declines, but having both a chronic and severe disability is associated with declines in life satisfaction of around 0.7 to 1.3 points from the onset year until 7 years after, with no evidence of adaptation back to baseline. Around 35-41% of wellbeing losses following disability onset are explained by changes in employment or income, but co-habiting with a partner at the time of onset is shown to buffer the effects of disability by around half. Disability onset is also found to negatively affect the spouse’s subjective wellbeing, although unexpectedly, this is not found to be the case for spouses who already have a disability themselves. Subjective wellbeing of non-disabled people with disabled partners continues to decline up to 7 years following spousal disability onset and is partially explained by changes in household incomes. Children are also found to experience small negative subjective wellbeing effects from parental disability but this is confined to girls aged 13 and over. Girls below this age can actually experience positive wellbeing effects from maternal disability.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	disabled; disability; onset; subjective wellbeing; wellbeing; UK; adaptation; spouse; children
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 August 2023
Last Modified:	14 Aug 2023 09:08
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/161664

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