Originally published here.

Worldwide, the prevalence of disability is argued to be growing, with population ageing and increasing incidence of chronic health conditions (World Health Organisation/World Bank 2011). Approximately 16% of the adult population aged 18 and older worldwide is disabled, with noticeable differences between high countries (12 per cent) and low income countries (18 per cent) (World Health Organisation/World Bank 2011). European sources suggest that in 2009 25% of the adult population aged 16+ in EU member states had some kind of impairment, defined as a sustained limitation in daily activities, varying from a low of 11% in Malta up to a high of 34% in Slovakia (Grammenos 2011).

Disability affects a wide range of socio-economic outcomes, including labour market participation, but also other factors that shape participation, including education, information and transport. Disabled people experience lower labour market participation rates than the non-disabled throughout Europe, although activity rates (Grammenos 2011) and the disabled/non-disabled participation rate differential varies cross-nationally (Pagán 2009). Disabled people tend to be concentrated in lower-skilled, lower-paid occupations (Meager and Higgins 2011). Low participation rates are costly for the individuals concerned in terms of economic and psychological well-being, for governments in terms of lost output and tax revenues, and increased welfare payments, and for society in terms of the impact of social exclusion and discrimination on civic participation and public life.

One possible solution to problems of low participation rates lies in the potential for disabled people to become self-employed or to start and run their own businesses. Some argue that self-employment can be used as a potential rehabilitation vocational tool to achieve faster and better integration into the labour market of individuals who become disabled (Arnold and Seekins 2002). Promoting entrepreneurship constitutes an important part of the Lisbon agenda and the Europe 2020 strategy which treats entrepreneurship as a key component of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.3 Entrepreneurship is perceived by policy-makers as a means of tackling labour market disadvantage and social exclusion more generally (De Clerq and Honig 2011), although others regard reliance on such options as over-optimistic, at least for some groups (Kitching 2006; Blackburn and Ram 2006).

In designing and implementing entrepreneurial support initiatives, policy-makers face a trade-off between providing generic advice to a large number of recipients, with widely varying impairments and circumstances that risks failure to engage, encourage and properly support would-be disabled entrepreneurs and measures to provide intensive, tailored support to a highly targeted subgroups of disabled entrepreneurs. This is a common dilemma for policy-makers. One approach arguably achieves high levels of contact but limited success in terms of sustainable new and existing businesses; the other reaches a limited number of businesses and may, inadvertently, exaggerate differences between those disabled people who are ‘labour market ready’ and others, but with a higher probability of sustaining the businesses created and/or supported.

There are certain generic actions that policy-makers might take to support disabled entrepreneurs, including the following, but all are arguably of only limited value, and must be supplemented by more concrete forms of intensive tailored support. There is a limit to the benefits such generic support can bring.

• Information/signposting services – making publicly funded information services, online and offline, accessible to as wide a group of people as possible, taking into account the wide variety of impairment characteristics known to exist in the population. As government support services have increasingly transferred to online platforms, the design of government websites is very important.

• Flexible yet secure disability benefits – policy should ensure that aspiring disabled entrepreneurs suffer no benefit penalty when taking up self-employment or starting a business. Transitions between labour market statuses (employment, self-employment, unemployment, inactivity) should be as seamless as possible while also offering safeguards during the early start-up phase when business revenues may be limited. Should new business ventures cease trading, a swift return to benefits should be guaranteed.

• Business adviser training – advisers often require training in order for them to give appropriate advice to different groups. Such training should be mindful of both the generic and specific barriers particular groups of aspiring and established entrepreneurs experience in starting and running a business. So, advisers should receive instruction on diversity issues and avoid stereotyping disabled clients on the basis of their impairments. Building clients’ confidence may be the best support advisers can provide.

You can read the complete report here.