At Home Among Strangers: Exploring the Deaf Community in the United States

6. Economic Life

6 ECONOMIC LIFE Deafness respects neither wealth nor social position. The raw facts of economic life intrude on the Deaf community as on any social group. Being Deaf provides no benefit, proves no asset, does not assist in the day-to-day business of earning a living and managing what goods are obtained from economic activities. To the contrary, deafness costs money. How and how much is the subject of this chapter because understanding the Deaf community demands an understanding of its economic position. What is the economic status of families from which Deaf children come? When they are grown, how do they fare in the labor market? How do employers treat them? Where do they work? In what positions, in what industries do they succeed best? worst? How do their earnings compare to others? What trends have been discerned in the welter of available data about the earnings of Deaf people? Economic status involves more than earnings from wages and investments. What about purchasing power? How does deafness affect the ability to manage funds? In sum, then, what is the Deaf community's economic position? ECONOMIC STATUS OF DEAF CHILDREN'S FAMILIES Deafness is associated inversely with family income. The National Center for Health Statistics consistently finds that the lower the income , the greater the probability of deafness. Its surveys have discovered that more than twice as many persons with severe hearing impairments (47 percent) reside in families with incomes under Economic Life 161 $7,000 than do persons with normal hearing (21 percent).l Accidents , injuries, diseases-these more often afflict poorer than richer people. On the other hand, medical care, diets, and living conditions improve as income increases. So for the portions of deafness that arise from external causes, there is an economic relationship. It follows, then, that proportionally more deaf children would come from poorer than from wealthier families. That is the finding of a study comparing the reported incomes of deaf schoolchildren's families in the United States with those of parents of schoolchildren in general. The proportions of the two groups in the middleincome category are equal, but deaf children's families are more frequently found in the lower than in the higher income categories (see Figure 4). More than (11) _ Deaf Group $20,000 (16) c:::J General Group $15,000 to (12) en $19,999 (16) .~ 0 OJ ~ $10,000 to (30) 8 $14,999 (30) Q) E 0 0 $5,000 to (27) .E $9,999 (24) Less than (20) $5,000 (15) 5 10 15 20 25 30 Percent Figure 4. Parent's annual incomes in families of Deaf schoolchildren compared to families of all schoolchildren: United States, 1977. SOURCE: Adapted from Rawlings and Jensema, 1977. N.B.: Figures in parentheses show percentages in that category. Percents add up to slightly more than 100 percent due to rounding. 162 AT HOME AMONG STRANGERS While the tendency for hearing impairment to be associated with low incomes prevails, the fact remains that wealthy people and royal families have deaf children.2 For example, the mother of England 's prince consort Philip was born deaf. The recessive genes that affected her can be traced back to the seventeenth-century Spanish throne. Even in genetic roulette, wealthier people have an advantage, since they travel more and, hence, have broader opportunities to choose their mates. Consanguinity (matings of individuals from the same gene pool) raises the probability of deafness in the offspring.3 THE COSTS OF RAISING A DEAF CHILD Perhaps having deaf children so affects their families that their incomes decline. In that case, deafness would contribute to the families ' lowered income rather than being the result of their inability to purchase proper care in the first place. Clearly, having a deaf child means increased expenses to meet the child's special needs. How much does deafness add to the cost of child-rearing? Asking what are the extra costs of raising a deaf child is like asking how much a house costs; much depends upon choices the families make. Parents of a deaf child need a broad array of services and devices whose prices vary greatly from place to place and time to time. To illustrate the impact of having a deaf child on a family's budget, then, consider the added expenses of rearing a deaf child as shown in Table 4. The illustration comes from an actual case...