Destigmatizing disabilities?

Persons with disabilities are disproportionately excluded from livelihood opportunities. This exclusion traps persons with disabilities and their households in perpetual poverty. I study whether a programme that simultaneously strengthens the ultra-poor’s productive, financial, human, and social assets alleviates this exclusion. 

The programme features adaptations of a previously successful, multifaceted program to make it disability-inclusive. Using a cluster-randomized study in northern Uganda, I find the programme induces a switch from less desirable occupations (casual labour) to more productive occupations (farm or non-farm business), especially among persons with disabilities. 

While the programme reduced the social isolation of persons without disabilities, the participation of persons with disabilities in social activities remained largely unchanged. I argue that the personal empowerment effects of the programme, without sufficient appreciation of barriers erected by society on the lives of persons with disabilities, reinforce the existing prejudicial views against persons with disabilities.