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People with a disability less likely to have completed a bachelor's degree

July 20, 2015

People with a disability are less likely to have completed a bachelor's degree than people with no disability. Among people age 25 and older in 2014, 16.4 percent of people with a disability had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, 34.6 percent of people with no disability had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. About 1 in 5 people with a disability had less than a high school diploma, compared with 1 in 10 people with no disability.

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Chart Data

Educational attainment of people age 25 and older with and without disabilities, 2014 annual averages
Educational attainment	With a disability		With no disability
Educational attainment	Number	Percent	Number	Percent
Total	27,794,000	100.0	181,440,000	100.0
Less than a high school diploma	5,917,000	21.3	18,226,000	10.0
High school graduates, no college	10,242,000	36.8	51,818,000	28.6
Some college or associate degree	7,088,000	25.5	48,606,000	26.8
Bachelor's degree and higher	4,547,000	16.4	62,790,000	34.6

People who have completed higher levels of education were more likely to be employed than were those with less education. At all levels of education, however, people with a disability were much less likely to work than were people with no disability. For example, 26.1 percent of people with a disability who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree were employed in 2014; among college graduates with no disability, 75.9 percent were employed.

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Chart Data

Employment–population ratios of people age 25 and older with and without disabilities, by educational attainment, 2014 annual averages
Educational attainment	With a disability	With no disability
Less than a high school diploma	7.9	51.5
High school graduates, no college	14.3	62.5
Some college or associate degree	21.3	69.5
Bachelor's degree and higher	26.1	75.9

These data are from the Current Population Survey. For more information, see “Persons with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics—2014” (HTML) (PDF). For more discussion about data on people with disabilities, see the Commissioner’s Corner blog, Why This Counts: How BLS data support the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, People with a disability less likely to have completed a bachelor's degree at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/people-with-a-disability-less-likely-to-have-completed-a-bachelors-degree.htm (visited March 02, 2026).

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