The CPS, work, and disability: a reply

of cps respondents. Yet it is likely that such limited work loss could be due to an acute condition. So, although Wolfe is correct in saying that those with shortterm, acute illnesses should be excluded from the disabled group, the data shortcomings and definitional problems make this difficult . Wolfe indicates partial support for her method of identifying the disabled because her estimate of the disabled from the cPS-12.3 percent of the population age 20 to 64, is only "slightly below" that from the 1972 Survey of the Disabled-14.6 percent. (A similar estimate from the 1977 National Health Survey is about 15 percent.) But the real difference between the surveys may be even greater than this . About 1 in 8 of the disabled were included in the CPS count because they were thought to have participated in sheltered workshops. (These persons were identified by a combination of their very low earnings and occupation.) This translates to about 1.7 million persons; yet fewer than 250,000 persons actually work in such settings . Virtually all sheltered workshops must be granted an exclusion from the minimum wage requirements by the Employment Standards Administration of the U.S . Department of Labor and, thus, data on paid workshop employment are available from that agency. If this overcount of those identified, ostensibly by their participation in sheltered workshops, is removed from the estimated CPS disabled count, as is a small number of those who may be considered to have been only acutely ill, it is reasonable to estimate that the proportion of the population that can be identified from the cps as disabled may be closer to 10 percent. Hence, fully a third of the disabled (or more accurately, the handicapped), quite likely many of those with the best job experience, cannot be identified from the cps and are counted in the nondisabled group. The effect that this undercount of the disabled would have on intergroup comparisons is obvious; it would cause excessive discrepancy between the labor force status of the two groups.