A comparative study on the employment impact of disability anti-discrimination laws and the role of the reasonable accommodation duty

This study evaluates the employment impact of disability anti-discrimination laws in OECD countries. The study focuses on the varieties of these domestic laws from an international perspective, particularly the reasonable accommodation duty which is considered a critical factor regarding the effects of disability anti-discrimination laws. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database, empirical analyses contain 977,727 working-age adults from 78 datasets of 24 OECD countries for 2000-2010. And also, the level of duty to provide reasonable accommodations is measured by four indicators drawn from the relevant theories. Empirical analyses using multilevel models reveal that during 2000-2010 the introduction of disability anti-discrimination laws reduced the employment gap between people with and without disabilities by 3.5 percentage points. And also, disability anti-discrimination laws with a high level of duty to provide reasonable accommodations have positive employment effects, whereas laws with a low level of duty are not effective. Based on these results, policy implications are discussed.