ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the costs and benefits of childhood disability, not as inherent aspects of disabling conditions, but rather, as socially imposed outcomes of an unanticipated, negatively defined event. Disabled children generally require more specialized medical care and more frequent hospitalizations than their non-disabled counterparts. Medical care costs for disabled children often begin with very expensive stays in neonatal intensive care units. A number of federal and state programs provide financial aid to families of the disabled. On the federal level, certain disabilities qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), according to family income. Other psychosocial costs, however, stem from non-economic societal reactions to disability such as stigma and victim-blaming. The majority of the costs faced by families both economic and psychosocial are socially imposed and are not inherent in the nature of a child's disability. The economic and psychosocial costs of childhood disability are similar in that they vary in direct proportion to societal support.
