Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007

6.2. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
6.2.1. Introduction
Data on People with Disabilities (PWD) in
Serbia is scarce. Existing statistical research does
not systematically examine PWDs. Importantly
there are no official data on the total number of
PWDs, type of disability and other relevant data that
would facilitate the monitoring of living standards
of this group, as well as defining policies and
measures for creating the conditions that would
improve their quality of life. Society needs to
ensure the active inclusion of PWDs in social and
economic life, with the aim of facilitating the
fulfilment of their rights which are guaranteed
through international documents and the Strategy
for the Improvement of the Position of PWDs,
adopted by the GoS towards the end of 2006.
There is no universally agreed definition of
disability. Defining disability is complex and
controversial. Disability is usually considered as the
outcome of complex interactions between the
functional limitations arising from a person's
physical, intellectual or mental condition and the
social and physical environment. There is a large
consensus that restrictions on being able to
undertake everyday activities are a key issue. The
main debates between disabled people organizations
and specialists of the area are focused on inclusion
or not of chronic diseases, the mental health
dimension and the level of restriction of activity to
consider a person to be disabled.
In addition, it is a complex issue to create a
representative sample frame of PWDs in Serbia.
The records for PWDs are kept by various
organisations and creating one complete count of
PWDs without the risk of double counting and
coming up against issues of confidentiality means
that, after wide consultation, it was agreed not to
create a specific sub sample of PWD households.
Instead to gather enough cases for examination of
the issues relating to PWDs some questions were
added to the questionnaire to broaden the definition
of PWDs. The distribution of these questions can
be seen in Table 4.
After examination of the LSMS data it was
decided that for the purpose of analysis for this
chapter the following questions would be used to
define PWDs:
1. Handicap has been confirmed by a medical
commission (question H10 health module)
2. There is no access for PWDS up to 7 years in the
compulsory preparatory pre-school programme
(question D3a education module).
3. Students aged 7-19 are attending a special school
for children with disabilities (question O1
education module).
4. A household member been “strongly limited” in
performing his/her usual activities over the past
six months (question H3 health module).
Based on the above definition LSMS 2007
included 1 671 PWDs (9.6 percent of the total
sample population).
Table 6.4. The Minimum European Health
Module and LSMS results 4
H1. How is your health in general? (percent)
Very good 27
Good 33
Fair 21
Bad 15
Very bad 4
H2 Do you have a long standing illness or health
problem? (percent)
Yes 32
No 68
H3. For at least the past 6 months have you been
limited in activities that people usually do because
of a health problem? (percent)
Yes, strongly limited 19
Yes limited 41
No 40
6.2.2. Demographic characteristics of
PWDs and poverty
Most PWDs fall within two age groups: 45-59
(30.0 percent) and 60+ (57.6 percent). This could
indicate that persons who have become disabled at
work, i.e. during the final third of their working life,
dominate this population of PWDs. Of these PWDs,
8.3 percent fall within the 30-44 age group, 2.0
percent are aged 20-29, 0.9 percent aged 15-19, 1.0
percent aged 7-14 age group and 0.1 percent within
the 0-6 age group. The distribution of PWDs by
gender and age is relatively equal.
76 Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007