A Johns Hopkins University study finds that U.S. science and technology doctoral graduates with childhood disabilities receive significantly lower salaries than their peers, suggesting greater inclusion efforts are critically needed.
Citing an analysis of federal data on more than 700,000 PhD recipients, a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University reported that STEM PhD holders who became disabled by the age of 25 earned $14,360 (£11,400) less per year in academia than those without such experience, and $10,580 less across all career paths.
The research team was led by Bonnielynn Swenar, an associate professor of ophthalmology and founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Disability Health Research, which believes the data supports calls for better treatment of scientists with disabilities.
STEM professionals are known to face a variety of barriers, says Dr Swenor, who published a paper in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. “Focusing on accessibility and universal design in STEM is important to recruit more scientists with disabilities,” she told Times Higher Education. “But we cannot ignore the myriad other biases and barriers that keep researchers with disabilities out of the workforce, pay inequality being one of them.”
Previous studies have reached similar conclusions: The National Science Foundation released its own salary comparison earlier this year, showing that STEM workers with at least one disability earn an average of $56,906, compared with $64,969 if they didn’t.
The NSF also reported that in 2021, the unemployment rate for scientists and engineers with disabilities was higher than for people without disabilities and higher than the national unemployment rate, and that scientists with disabilities were less likely to receive research assistantships, traineeships, internships, fellowships, scholarships, and grants than people without disabilities.
About 9% of biology and biomedical sciences PhD graduates in the United States in 2019 reported having one or more disabilities, according to the NSF survey.
According to a National Institutes of Health analysis, barriers facing these scientists include a system-wide lack of recruiting, engaging and adequate training for people with disabilities, low numbers of people with disabilities in decision-making roles and a widespread lack of data about this workforce.
Other research has shown that the problem stems from the entire education process in the United States, with students with disabilities facing large opportunity gaps in science when they start their schooling.
Dr Swenor’s team highlights data showing that more than a quarter of American adults have some kind of disability, yet they make up just 10% of the STEM workforce.
“The inclusion of people with disabilities in STEM fields is essential to diversifying science, an issue of both economic development and equity,” the team wrote in their paper. “Full inclusion of diverse talent in STEM fields benefits the nation’s scientific community because research and innovation are strengthened when people with diverse life experiences and knowledge contribute to solving complex problems.”
Swenor and his team used 2019 data from the NSF’s biennial survey.