Disability Rates by Type – Disability in America Series

July 2016

The maps and chart below explore the American Community Survey 5-year data (Table S1810) on disability estimates by county type (OMB county classifications). The ACS asks a set of disability indicator questions to determine disability. If a respondent can answer “yes” to any disability question they are classified as having a disability. The data is for individuals ages 18 and older as not all data is collected for ages younger than 18 years.

Chart 5. Disability rates by type and county type (ages 18 years and up). A bar chart indicating that rates of disability increase from urban to rural across all types of disability.

Chart 5. Disability Rates by Type and County Type (ages 18 years and up). This chart shows that the trends of higher disability rates in rural areas remain when looking across impairment. Rates increase from urban to rural across all groups. The highest rates are found in the ambulatory difficulty group (8% in metropolitan to 10.6% in metropolitan to 12.5% in noncore) followed by Independent Living (5.6%, 6.8%, 7.8%), Cognitive (5%, 6%, 7,1%), Hearing (4%, 6%, 7.1%), Self-Care (2.9%, 3.6%, 4.2%) and Vision (2.6%, 3.5%, 4.1%) impairment.

Maps of disability type by county

Use the black arrows on the sides of the map below to scroll through maps of the various disability types, or simply watch the slideshow. You may also use the links below to view additional versions of these maps and full text descriptions.

  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of vision difficulty by county.
  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of hearing difficulty by county.
  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of mobility difficulty by county.
  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of self-care difficulty by county.
  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of cognitive difficulty by county.
  • This is a map of the United States which depicts rates of independent living difficulty by county.

This work is part of the RTC:Rural Geography of Disability Project.