Pay discrimination against persons with disabilities: Canadian evidence from PALS

The objective of the study is to estimate the extent of pay discrimination against persons with a disability in Canada. The methodology involves decomposing or partitioning the pay gap between persons with disabilities and a comparison group of persons without disabilities into a portion due to differences in the pay-determining characteristics and a portion due to the differences in pay when they have the same characteristics – commonly attributed to discrimination. In this study, we further control for differences in performance by restricting the analysis to persons with a disability that does not limit their performance at work. The data is from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey linked to the 2006 Census. We find that persons with a disability that does not affect their performance at work are still paid about 10% less than a comparison group with no disability but with the same pay-determining characteristics.