Education and Disability
By Hayden Beck
Society is often split on the lines of certain characteristics within the population. Perhaps it is human nature to categorize things hastily and without prolonged thought. And if history is to be reflected on, we see that other humans are no exception to this phenomenon. Wealth, health, education, race, and gender are just a few examples of the separate bins we throw people into. The world is often unkind to different intersections of people, and the impact of the biases and circumstances faced by certain groups are not always adequately understood.
Education is one such luxury that not everyone in the United States can have. Attending a university is one such privilege that is taken for granted by those that have the capacity to learn at one. In America, college is expensive, absurdly so. There are opportunities for financial aid and scholarships, but in the end every dollar counts when one is barely able to scrape enough money together to put food on the table. I mention this to highlight the distinctions between those with different achievements in education. Those with college degrees have different opportunities than those without and thus often end up facing different challenges.
The one thing that links all people across all walks of life is human biology. Regardless of one’s educational background, wealth, or status, they are still human and can therefore be diagnosed with the same ailments one of another background can. It is with this in mind that I form this analysis into the correlation between different levels of educational attainment and the percentage of disability in the population.
As a resident of Colorado and a member of the disabled community, this analysis has taken a certain degree of personal relevance, and I will therefore only be looking at data from the different counties of Colorado. The data I am pulling from contains information regarding the percentage of residents that have a high school diploma or college degree, and the number of residents that are disabled within different counties. It is important to note that this dataset does not contain information at the individual level, but rather the county level.
Above is a scatter plot showing the relationship between the percentage of high school graduates in a county and the percentage of the population that is disabled. The Pearson’s r Coefficient, which indicates the strength of a correlation is r = 0.55. This means that there is a strong relationship between disability and high school graduation. As the percentage of high school graduates goes up, so does the amount of disability. This is not to say graduating from high school causes disability, but rather it is likely that disabled people do not seem to have an issue graduating from high school. This makes sense, as a ‘disability’ just refers to some condition that detrimentally affects an individual, regardless of the date of diagnosis, the type of condition, or the severity of it. And I suspect that the majority of disabilities do not prevent one from graduating high school.
Above is a scatterplot depicting the relationship between the percentage of college graduates in a county and the percentage of the population that is disabled. The Pearson’s r Coefficient for this graph is r = -0.56. Interestingly, this is an almost perfect contrast to the high school graph. It tells us that as the percentage of college graduates goes up, the amount of disability in the population goes down.
The difference between these graphs and correlations highlights an interesting contrast. Does graduating college lessen the likelihood of acquiring a disability? Without more data it is difficult to say. But some logical conclusions can be drawn nonetheless. Attending a university of leads one down a significantly different path than one would have traveled after just graduating high school. Jobs in the sciences, the arts, law, or business are just a few examples. But without attending college, job choices are somewhat different. Examples include factory work, military careers, trade schools, and much more. The difference is that the latter jobs are often more physically demanding than the former. And a physically strenuous career might lead to a higher frequency of disabilities in a population. Meanwhile, jobs that require a college degree might be less labor intensive, and therefore have a lower number of disabilities.
While this conclusion is not necessarily true in all cases, it is a possible explanation for the contrast in the number of disabilities between the two levels of educational attainment. With this in mind, access to education beyond high school is a luxury not all can afford. And as such, those who cannot lack the advantages that come with higher education. Recognizing one’s privilege, or lack thereof, can go a long way in making changes that benefit everyone, not just those who are lucky enough to have access to college.
