The Financial Consequences of Spinal Injury

Abstract

As with unemployment, it is true to say that poverty is unequally distributed and in this unequal distribution disabled people get more than their fair share of this poverty (Townsend, 1979). It is generally recognised that the financial consequences of any disability may be deleterious, as a recently published statement shows:

Even taking account of the available benefits, people with disabilities are still more likely to suffer from poverty than are non-disabled people. Also people who are equally severely disabled can receive widely differing amounts of money according to the cause or origin of their disability, their national insurance contribution record, their age, or their marital status.

(Disability Alliance, 1987)

The Disablement Income Group (1987) has recently shown how this latter point may operate specifically with regard to spinal injury. A person who is paralysed from the neck, whose injury occurred at work, would get £199.45 per week in benefits; someone who has paid National Insurance contributions but was injured at home would get £91.30; and someone whose injury occurred at birth would get only £75.85. Someone in receipt of legal compensation would probably get in excess of £400 000 for such an injury.