How many disabled people are there world-wide?
Reported disability prevalence rates vary widely. In many developed countries, the rates are quite high. The prevalence rates in The United States and Canada are 19.4% and 18.5%, respectively. Conversely, developing countries often report very low rates. In countries such as Kenya and Bangladesh the reported rates of disability are under 1%. These rates vary for a number of reasons: differing definitions of disability, different measurement methodologies, and variance in the quality of that measurement. The UN created the Washington Group on Disability Statisticsto generate an approach to measuring prevalence in an internationally comparable way that is well-founded in recent thinking on defining disability. The census questions they endorsed attempt to measure that portion of the population that has a limitation in a basic core activity of daily living, such as walking or seeing. This functional approach has been tested and implemented in many countries, and generates a narrower range
