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Challenge of statistics on disability and autonomy for a coherent public policy

Written Question No. 26644 - 15th Parliament

Question of M. CARDON Rémi (Somme - SER) published on 10/02/2022
Mr. Rémi Cardon draws the attention of the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, in charge of persons with disabilities, to an issue developed with the Observatory on Disability Policies.
A criticism regularly addressed to public statistics concerns the difficulty of knowing the number of disabled people in France.
The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES) say they want to avoid favouring one of them by making an «official» definition and always respond in a plural way to the question of the enumeration of persons with disabilities.

Thus, a broad acceptance consists, for example, in counting all persons who declare difficulties or impossibility in at least one of the functional dimensions (see, hear, move, etc.): according to this acceptance, France has 4.8 million people with disabilities aged 16 to 59 and 5.4 million people aged 60 and over, according to the 2008-2009 disability-health survey (excluding people living in institutions).

According to an even more limited acceptance, corresponding to the fact of declaring itself strongly limited in the activities of daily life, these numbers are respectively 2.1 and 2.7 million people.

Finally, if we think in terms of administrative recognition of a disability, a disability or a loss of autonomy, in 2008-2009 France had 2.5 million disabled people aged 16 to 59, and 1.3 million aged 60 and over.
However, the figure of 12 million is widely shared in the documentation materials of ministries, associations and disability actors in France, as being the benchmark figure.

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Also these reports, to cross and assimilate without possibility of being able to popularize them and not being accessible to the greatest number, promote public policies that are not coherent and efficient and do not allow us to understand the realities that are necessary to ensure their success.

He therefore asked him to put in place working statistics in connection with INSEE in order to finally have figures on which public policies on disability could be based.

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Published in the OJ Senate of 10/02/2022 - page 703

Transmitted to the Ministry of Solidarity, Autonomy and Persons with Disabilities. 

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