Will the costs of accommodating workers with disabilities remain low?

Whether the costs of job accommodation remain low as more persons with disabilities enter the work force is a crucial issue in evaluating the progress of the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Much depends on the extent to which health and economic factors thought to raise or lower the costs of accommodation to employers actually predict accommodation outcomes. An empirical model of employer accommodation is specified and tested with data on a representative sample of Americans in their fifties. Among others, the results show that both the likelihood and extent of job accommodation are significantly influenced by cost‐increasing and cost‐decreasing factors, in each case in the direction predicted by the model. Inferences about the future trajectory of the costs of job accommodation and the employment effects of the ADA are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.