Trajectory of identifying people with disabilities in Brazil: an analysis of IBGE household surveys

The present study aims to elucidate the main aspects of recent data production regarding people with disabilities in Brazil. In its first section, a documentary and a bibliographic search is employed to unveil the influence of debates surrounding conceptions of disability concerning statistical information surveys. Subsequently, parameters for the identification of individuals with disabilities are presented in the 2019 National Health Survey (NHS), the 2022 Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Continuous PNAD), and the 2022 Demographic Census. Although these surveys are conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and adhere to the recommendations of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG), they employ distinct questionnaires, requiring careful attention from the users of this data. In the third section, sociodemographic indicators generated from the microdata of the 2019 NHS and the 2022 Continuous PNAD are analyzed in order to elucidate differences between them and contemplate the adoption of a cutoff point to define people with disabilities. It is observed that individuals with more severe difficulties are the ones facing greater challenges in accessing education and the labor market.