Postsecondary students
- 21% of students enrolled in postsecondary programs reported having a disability.
- 11% of postbaccalaureate students reported having a disability
- 28.1% of veterans enrolled in postsecondary programs report having a disability.
SOURCE: Fast Facts: Students with disabilities, National Center for Education Statistics. Data from 2019-2020.
57 million people in the U.S. have some sort of disability, and about 1 in 4 of today’s 20-year-olds will become disabled before they retire.
Most common disabilities, Americans 18-44 years old:
- Arthritis or other musculoskeletal: 22.2 million
- Mental illness: 12.9 million
- Fractures or joint injury: 7 million
- Heart or other circulatory: 5.9 million
- Lung: 5 million
- Diabetes: 2.5 million
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 American Community Survey, 1-Year Estimates, American FactFinder, Table B18120
People with disabilities constitute one of the nation’s largest minority groups, and the only group that ANY OF US can become a member of at any time.
In the United States:
- 1 in 4 adults (27%) live with a disability. Of those adults with a disability:
- 12.1 percent have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
- 12.8 percent have a cognition disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions.
- 7.2 percent have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
- 6.1 percent are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing
- 4.8 percent have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
- 3.6 percent have a self-care disability with difficulty dressing or bathing.
Source: Disability Impacts All of Us, Centers for Disease Control, retrieved April 3, 2024.