Abstract:

DALYS are problematic for assessing the impact of public health expenditures on people with disabilities in part because the indicator is not sensitive to changes in people's functional status. Interventions which improve people's functioning but that do not change an underlying medical diagnosis get no credit. Rehabilitation services are a prime example of a health service which will be undervalued by the DALYs. This paper develops and presents two indicators – the Activity Limitation Score (ALS) and the Participation Restriction Score (PRS) -- which attempt to rectify this problem. Household data from Zambia is used to explore their potential usefulness.

Speaker:

Mr. Daniel Mont
Daniel Mont is a Senior Economist with the Disability and Development Team in HDNSP. He specializes in disability measurement and inclusive development, in particular in the areas of employment, education and social protection. He is the Bank's representative to the UN Statistical Commission's Washington Group on Disability Measurement. Prior to joining the Bank, he directed the Workers' Compensation Project at the National Academy of Social Insurance, was a principal analyst for the US Congressional Budget Office, and an assistant professor in the Policy Analysis and Management Dept. at Cornell University. This talk is a follow-up to his article, "Measuring Disability and Health," that appeared in The Lancet last May.

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