Disability and Labor Market Earnings

Abstract

Over one million Americans aged 15 years and older are deaf or hard of hearing. These individuals may face barriers to and within the labor market, leading to lower employment rates and reduced earnings compared with their counterparts without a hearing disability. Our study contributes to the sparse literature on the relationship between hearing disability and labor market outcomes by examining “hearing earnings gaps,” namely, earnings gaps between individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and their counterparts without a hearing disability. Using a sample of 25- to 40-year-old full-time year-round workers from the 2011 American Community Survey, we estimate separate earnings equations by hearing ability and gender using generalized estimating equations. For both men and women, Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions indicate that roughly 40% of the overall hearing earnings gap is attributable to differences in educational attainment, potential experience, race/ethnicity, and marital status. The remaining 60% may reflect differences in communication skills and other unobservable characteristics, occupational segregation, labor market discrimination, and stigma.