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METROSTATS Metropolitan Council | metrocouncil.org/metrostats | 4 FIGURE 5. WORK STATUS BY ABILITY STATUS IN THE TWIN CITIES REGION Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates, 2011-2015. People with disabilities 30.2% 58.5% 39.9% 28.3% 4.5% Employed full-time Employed part-time Seeking work Not in the labor force People without disabilities 24.2% 7.5% 6.8% In combination, the disparities in work status and employment rates erode the earning potential of people with disabilities. Two out of every three people with disabilities have no earnings, compared with one in every five people without a disability (Figure 6). Put differently, a person with a disability is over three times more likely to have no earnings than one without a disability. Conversely, a person without a disability is four times more likely than a person with- out a disability to make over $45,000 a year. FIGURE 6. ANNUAL EARNINGS BY ABILITY STATUS IN THE TWIN CITIES REGION Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimate Public Use Microdata, 2011-2015. 65.5%People with disabilities People without disabilities 14.7%11.3%8.5% 19.8%17.9%27.7%34.5% Less than $15,000No earnings $15,000 to $44,999 $45,000 and above People with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty Like work status, earnings only tell part of the story. People without earnings—that is, income from paid employ- ment—may have other sources of income. In some cases, people who have no earnings, including people with disabilities, qualify for government programs that provide alternative sources of income. Poverty rates, calculated by using an individual's total income, can provide a more holistic picture of economic well-being. Unsurprisingly, disparities based on ability status extend to poverty rates as well: one in every five people with disabilities in the region had incomes below the federal poverty level in 2011-2015. In contrast, only one in every 10 people without dis- abilities live in poverty. In other words, people with disabilities are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than residents without disabilities (Figure 7, next page). The federal poverty level is a conservative measure of actual poverty, however. The federal poverty level for a family of four in 2016 was $24,563. In a region like ours, where the Area Median Income (AMI) is relatively high ($85,800 in 2016), defining poverty as 185% of the federal poverty level better aligns this measure with 50% of AMI, often used as the income eligibility threshold for federal and state assistance programs, like Housing Choice Vouchers. Even with this broader definition, the poverty disparity remains: people with disabilities are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty than people without disabilities.