1) 6.2% of Albania's adult population suffers from some form of disability, with mobility restrictions being the most common at 3.7%. 2) Disabled working-age adults are 5 times less likely to be employed than non-disabled adults. Those with cognitive, self-care, and communication restrictions face the most employment challenges. 3) Disabled individuals tend to have lower educational attainment, with only around half of children with hearing or mobility difficulties enrolled in school.

1. PROFILE OF THE DISABLED
POPULATION IN ALBANIA
Céline Ferré,
Emira Galanxhi
Olgeta Dhono

2. KEY FINDINGS
 6.2% of the adult population in Albania is disabled
 Disabled working-age adults are 2 times more likely
to be out of the labor force than non-disabled adults
 1 in 5 youth (15-64 year-old) with vision restriction
is looking for a job but cannot find one
 Disability prevalence does NOT vary across income
quintiles
 Disabled persons from the bottom quintile are 2
times more likely to experience or more disabilities
than the top quintile
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3. DATA AND DEFINITIONS
 Washington Group (WG) general measure on
disability
 Represent the most commonly occurring limitations in
basic activity functioning
 Set of 6 questions asked in the census: seeing, hearing,
mobility, self-care, cognition, and communication
 Two datasets
 Census 2011
 LSMS 2012 with similar questions on disability (seeing,
hearing, body deformation, limbs, cognition,
communication and other)
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4. 4

5. 5

6. 6.2% OF THE ADULT POPULATION IN ALBANIA
SUFFERS FROM SOME SORT OF DISABILITY
 2,084,137 individuals aged 15 and above
 Disability prevalence:
 Most common = movement restrictions (3.7%)
 Least common = hearing and communication (1.7% and
1.%)
 Vision, learning and self-care fall somewhere in
between
 Results are consistent with the evidence form other
Eastern European and Central Asian countries
(Mete, 2008)
 22% of the population thus reports having some
difficulty, strong difficulty or inability to perform daily
tasks 6

7. 7

8. GEOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN
 Results don’t vary much across regions
 Tirana displays the lowest incidence of disability (less
than 5%)
 Gjirokaster has the highest incidence with 8% of the
population
 Disability incidence is higher in less connected
areas…
 … but concentrated – in terms of absolute numbers
– around the biggest agglomerations: Tirane,
Durres, Shkodra, Elbasan
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9. DISABILITY DISTRIBUTION,
CENSUS 2011
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Number of persons 15 year and over
who reported at least disability /
Total population aged 15 years and
over
Ratio calculated for each commune
and municipality

10. OLDER AGE COHORTS ARE MORE AFFECTED BY
DIFFICULTIES IN PERFORMING DAILY TASKS…
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11. … ESPECIALLY PHYSICAL DIFFICULTIES
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12. INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES ARE
CONCENTRATED IN LARGER HOUSEHOLDS
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13. DISABILITY IS CORRELATED WITH LOWER
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
 Disabled children are overrepresented in the
category of primary-school-aged children not
attending school
 75% only of children with some disabilities are enrolled
 The picture varies greatly by type of disability faced
by children
 more than 2/3 of the children with eyesight,
communication, cognition and self-care impairments are
enrolled in school
 only 1/2 of children with hearing difficulties or mobility
difficulties are attending schools
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14. 14

15. THE EDUCATION GAP IS PARTICULARLY LARGE
FOR YOUTH AND ELDERS
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16. DISABLED ADULTS ARE 5 TIMES LESS LIKELY TO BE
WORKING THAN THE NON-DISABLED POPULATION
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17. THOSE WITH COGNITIVE, SELF-CARE AND
COMMUNICATION RESTRICTIONS EMERGE AS THE
MOST DISADVANTAGED IN TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT
PROSPECTS
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18. WORKING-AGE VALID MEMBERS OF HOUSEHOLDS
WITH AT LEAST ONE DISABLED HOUSEHOLD
MEMBER ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE EMPLOYED
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19. DISABILITY AND INCOME
 No higher prevalence of disability among lower
expenditure groups
 Yet the population in the top quintile appears to
suffer more from partial limitations
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20. SOCIAL TRANSFERS
 Households with disabled members are quite
dependent on social protection
 79% of all households with a disabled member are
covered by at least one social assistance transfer
 But half of the households who receive the disability
assistance have no disabled member
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21. GROUPING DISABLED POPULATION INTO
GROUPS
 We use a Latent Class Analysis method to group
individuals with disabilities
 Each group is made of people who look most like one
another
 Each group looks least like one another
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