Disability levels rise to 7.5% of the population

Statistician General Pali Lehohla says that 29m people in South Africa are living with a disability. Image: Stats SA

Briefing reporters on the Profile of Persons with Disabilities in SA Report, Statistician General Pali Lehohla said 29m people out of 51.8 million people live with a disability.

Because of a change in the definition the number of people with disabilities this figure is now at 7.5% from 2% in 2001.

"By province this disability covers the provinces of North West, Northern Cape and Free State very predominant in disability," said the Lehohla.

Disability is defined as the loss or elimination of opportunities to take part in the life of the community due to physical, sensory, psychological, development and other impairments.

According to the report both measures of disability (disability index and degree of difficulty measures) show noticeable sex variations. The index shows that disability is more prevalent among women compared with men (8.3% and 6.5% respectively).

The report - which profiles the prevalence and patterns of disability in the country - is based on Census 2011 data.

Disability levels highest in Free State, Northern Cape

Black people according to the report had the highest proportion of people with disabilities at 7.8% followed by whites at 6.5%.

When coming to the degree of difficulty in the domains of seeing, hearing, communicating, walking, remembering and self-care, the report showed that 11% of people had difficulties seeing properly. A total 4.2% had remembering/concentrating difficulties while 3.6% had hearing difficulties.

Referring to disability and education, the results showed that the majority of people aged between 20 and 24 with severe difficulties across all domains were not attending tertiary education.

With reference to earnings, people with disabilities in urban provinces (Gauteng and the Western Cape) generally have higher earnings compared with the rest of the provinces. The report found that people with disabilities in Limpopo have the lowest income followed by the Eastern Cape (R15,101 and R17,938 average annual income respectively). Among disabled people, men earned double of what females earned.

Additionally white and Indian/Asian population groups had substantially higher annual earnings compared with coloureds and blacks.

Blacks with disabilities have the lowest income while their white counterparts earn four times this amount.

With regard to access to housing, the report found that more than half of people with disabilities lived in dwellings that are owned and fully paid off, while in households headed by persons without disabilities about 40% lived in dwellings that are owned and fully paid off.

The Free State and Northern Cape had the highest proportion of disabled people, at 11.1% and 11%, respectively.

"Disability in a way does actually limit the possibility of people participating actively in things like education," said Lehohla.