Long-term social change through normalization reforms targeting people with disabilities and their peers
Despite the recognition of the equal rights of people with disabilities for life and work, economic wellbeing of people with severe disabilities deteriorates, and the related efficient public policies remain largely unknown. For the policies that rest on social inclusion, no causal evidence exists to date. This project will fill this gap by establishing the causal effects of living in an institution versus living at home for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their relatives and neighbors, as well as the coevolution of both groups. I will apply frontier econometric methods to
detailed register microdata for Denmark and Sweden, where in the 1980s–2000s institutions for people with severe disabilities were dismantled and replaced with public housing in local communities. This project seeks to encourage the development of mainstream economics to recognize the power of social inclusion in explaining economic wellbeing and inequality.