How many people with disabilities live in rural areas?
The rural population of people with disabilities will vary depending on how you define disability and how you define rural. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, nearly 59 million people in the U.S. aged five and over have disabilities, and of those approximately 11 million live in rural areas. An Update on the Demography of Rural Disability, a 2004 report by the Research and Training Center on Disability in Rural Communities (RTC), estimates that 11 to 15 million people with some disability and approximately half that number with a significant disability live in rural areas.
