The Quality of Life of Youth with Disabilities in Egypt with Special Focus on Educational Achievement

Although youth with disabilities represent a heterogeneous group with respect to disability domain and degree of severity they are disadvantaged in almost all dimensions of the quality of life. The aim of this research is to examine the impact of disability among youth on one dimension of the quality of life which is education opportunities by using data of the nation-wide survey “Household Observatory Survey, round 13, 2016,” that was conducted by the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). Our study population consists of 12,651 individuals in the age group 15-29 years. The used data implemented the suggestion of UN-WG short list of questions to measure disability. Results showed that the prevalence rates of any, severe and complete disabilities among youth are 4.8%, 1.7% and 0.8%, respectively. The most common domain of severe disability among youth is communicating followed by remembering and concentration. The study applied random effect logit model to examine the impact of disability among youth on the likelihood of attending school, controlling for the other factors and the results suggested that disability has the strongest deterrent impact on school enrollment and interacts with the individual’s standard of living in a way that exacerbates inequity. On the other hand, the results of the sequential transition model indicated that although disability tremendously reduces the chance of school enrollment its effect on continuing education to preparatory and to secondary is weakened and turns out to be statistically insignificant, signifying that once a disabled child is enrolled in education, s(he) is capable of continuing education.  Additionally, gender, region of residence, parental level of education and family wealth significantly impact the educational opportunities of Egyptian youth.