Disabled people twice as likely to be poor

An assessment of poverty in Britain has found disabled people are twice as likely to be poor than the able bodied, and the gap has widened in the past decade.

The annual report by think tank the New Policy Institute found 30 per cent of disabled adults of working age lived on 60 per cent of average income levels.
 
Lack of access to paid work was cited as the main reason, with disabled graduates who wanted to work considerably more likely to be unemployed than an unqualified able-bodied person.

The report, funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, also found that benefits for out of work people without dependent children were worth 20 per cent less, relative to earnings, than in 1997.