ABSTRACT

Historically disability has been connected with poverty given that physical impairments and mental health issues are associated around the world with the loss of paid work, low social status and stigma. People with disabilities 1 have generally been constructed as unable to work without really being given the opportunity to be involved in paid employment (Shakespeare 1998). Under state socialism people with disabilities from Central and Eastern Europe were not defined as poor, but rather as the ‘children of the state’ because they were officially protected by a wide net of large social institutions, and perspectives such as the quality of life, independent living and the life course did not count (Zaviršek 2006). Poverty in the region increased dramatically after the disintegration of state socialist economies and governments and is especially sharp in countries where social transfers are low or hardly exist and where the social dimensions of health are not taken seriously, for example in Ukraine, Russia, Romania and Georgia (UNDP Ukraine 2008; Mete 2008; Mitra et al. 2011). People with disabilities are therefore disproportionately represented among those living in extreme or chronic deprivation since poverty causes disability and conversely disability can cause poverty.