Office of Vocational Rehabilitation A Summary of Progress FOR THE THIRD successive year, the State-Federal program for the vocational rehabilitation of disabled civilians prepared more than 60,000 substantially handicapped Americans for work and placed them in useful occupations. The vast majority of these men and women are now completely self-supporting. The return of this year's group of disabled individuals to productive work brings to more than a half million the number of disabled civilians rehabilitated since 1943, when the present range of services was established by law. It brings to 738,000 the total number of rehabilitations during the 33 years in which vocational rehabilitation services have been available to Americans as a service of their State and Federal governments. The consequences of physical and mental disability constitute a growing problem of serious economic and social implications. Not the least of these is the dependency of large numbers of handicapped people upon relatives, philanthropy, or public assistance. Dependency, in the simplest terms, means a loss of financial independence. To the individual, it means—at the very least-damaged morale and impaired living standard. To the family, all too often, it means dissolution of the home and destruction of the family unit. To the Nation as a whole, it means social and economic waste and a heavier tax burden which must be distributed among all who are gainfully occupied. Vocational rehabilitation is a concerted, systematic, and economically feasible counter-measure against disablement and the resulting dependency. Prevention and reduction of dependency due to physical or mental disability continue to be major aims of the State-Federal program for helping the disabled. A brief consideration of public dependency, involving public assistance payments made necessary because of disability, gives some measure of the effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation in achieving its aims. Nearly 1 out of every 5 disabled persons rehabilitated during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1953, was receiving public assistance at the time services were begun, or at some time during the course of rehabilitation. To maintain these disabled recipients of public assistance on relief for just one year would cost an estimated $8.7 million. But the cost of their rehabilitation was only about $6.4 million. This expenditure is less than three-fourths of what it would cost to maintain these disabled people at public expense for only one year. Since many of these individuals undoubtedly would have needed public assistance over an extended period of time, the savings made possible by their rehabilitation-which is generally a one-time expenditure-are cumulative. Disabled people who are receiving public assistance year after year consume taxes, whereas rehabilitated people who are working pay taxes every year of their working lives. Although 11,355 of the 61,308 disabled individuals rehabilitated during the year were recipients of public assistance, many more would have become public charges if they had not been rehabilitated into gainful employment before the effects of disability and enforced idleness had exhausted their resources. There is no way to measure the dollar savings from preventing public dependency by restoring disabled people to self-support before they become completely impoverished by their inability to earn. Regardless of whether or not the disabled people who are served by vocational rehabilitation repay in one way or another the cost of the services made available to them, our society-under the American tradition of a fair chance to all-has an obligation to restore to them the capacity and opportunity for self-support. However, the economic facts of rehabilitation-as illustrated by the achievements of the program during the past year-give strong support to the proposition that vocational rehabilitation is an investment in human welfare that is wholly self-liquidating. As an investment, it pays high returns in dollars as well as in social betterment. HIGHLIGHTS OF 1953 The Federal income tax payments which will be made by the disabled men and women rehabilitated during 1953 are estimated at $10 million a year. Thus the $30 million in Federal income taxes that these rehabilitated workers are expected to pay in the next three years exceeds the entire 1953 Federal grants for vocational rehabilitation program by more than 30 percent. The cost of operating the program for the year was $564 per person rehabilitated. This is substantially less than the cost of maintaining a disabled individual on relief for just 12 months. The combined annual earnings of the disabled men and women rehabilitated during the year were estimated at $17 million when they became clients of the program. After their rehabilitation, their combined earnings were estimated at $114 million a year. An estimated 100 million man hours a year have been added to the Nation's productive effort by this group of disabled men and women. Many of them have acquired new skills which are in short supply and which are vitally important to the Nation's preparedness effort. More than 8,000 went into the skilled trades, and about 5,200 more became farmers or agricultural workers. More than 2,400 entered professional occupations in such fields as education, medicine, and engineering. In addition to the 61,308 disabled persons who were fully rehabilitated, the State-Federal program placed 13,491 more in jobs. This latter group, although gainfully employed, will not be counted as rehabilitated until follow-up counseling has been completed to ensure that they are successful in their new careers. When the fiscal year closed, 133,173 disabled men and women were receiving services designed to restore their ability to work. These services were being provided by the 88 State agencies for vocational rehabilitation which receive Federal grants-in-aid under this program. Expenditures by the States on the public program for vocational rehabilitation during the fiscal year totaled $34,583,138. Of this, $22,947,581 comprised Federal grants to the States, and $11,635,557 was from State sources. COMBATING DEPENDENCY We are becoming a Nation of older people, with all of the physical and social problems that this implies. The question of how to deal with dependency is therefore becoming increasingly important. Man's average life expectancy at birth has increased from 49 to 68 years since the turn of the century. The ratio of productive workers to those who are not working is declining. Larger numbers of aged, chronically ill, and disabled people must be supported by those who work. Many of these persons could never become employable because of advanced age, extreme severity of disability, or other reasons. There are, however, an estimated 2 million disabled men and women of working age who could-if provided with vocational rehabilitationjoin or participate to a greater extent in the Nation's productive enterprises. These are persons with substantial employment handicaps resulting from impairments or diseases, who are not now in the labor market (or are only marginal workers), but who could be helped |