The association between disability and poverty has been noted intuitively, although there is little systematic
evidence to support this claim, mainly due to a lack of quality data on disability. This paper attempts to fill a
knowledge gap on disability and poverty in developing countries by using a unique data set, the World Health
Survey, which has comparable measures of disability and economic indicators for working age population in
15 developing countries. Disability is significantly associated with higher multidimensional poverty in most of
the developing countries under study. At the individual level, in most of the countries included in the study,
persons with disabilities have lower educational attainment and experience lower employment rates than
persons without disabilities. At the household level, in most countries households with disabilities are not
worse off when their well-being is measured by mean non-health PCE. However, in most countries,
households with disabilities have a significantly lower mean asset index and report spending a higher
proportion of their expenditure on health care.