Aged and dependency ratios among autism, intellectual disability and other disabilities: 10-year trend analysis

Dependency ratios are useful as general indicators of future economic and social health. The present paper focuses on the description of dependency ratios and over time change in different kind of disability which include autism, intellectual disability, vision, hearing, and limb impairments. We analyzed data mainly from the public web-access information which collected by the Taiwan MOI. We analyzed the national register data in two ways for 2000–2009: the Disabled Population by Aged and Grade and the Taiwan General Population by Age, to examine the dependent ratios in disabilities. The dependency ratio measures the percentage of dependent people (not of working age)/number of people of working age (economically active), and it is decomposed into the child dependency ratio, the aged dependency ratio and index of aging. The results found the aged dependency ratios in general or disabled population were significantly increased in 2000–2009. Vision, hearing and limb disabilities had the higher aging index in all disabilities. Intellectual disability and autistic cases were relatively younger age population than other disabilities. However, the trend test revealed that child dependency ratio in autism decrease significantly as the identified case number increase during the past 10 years. Many reasons were discussed in the context of the trend changes. Finally, the results highlights that the increasing dependency ratio trends revealed that we are facing an aging population, the social security system need to provide for a significantly older and non-working population. The future study should consider the indicators such as the number of people receiving disability benefits or the use of disability-adjusted life years, they would provide more accurate for tracking dependency in the society.