The unintended consequences of the Americans with Disabilities Act

HEADNOTE

Contrary to legislative intent, ADA makes the disabled less employable

ECONOMISTS COMMONLY LAMENT PUBLIC POLICIES that transfer resources to a particular group because such policies ignore the "law of unintended

consequences." Economists point out, for example, that the law of unintended consequences is at work when workers' wages fall in response to a mandated increase in benefits or when employment falls in response to an increase in the minimum wage. As Henry Hazlitt said in Economics in One Lesson, "Depth in economics consists in looking for all the consequences of a policy instead of merely resting one's gaze on those immediately visible" (p. 194).

The employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) exemplify the law of unintended consequences because those provisions have harmed the intended beneficiaries of the Act, not helped them. ADA was enacted to remove barriers to employment of people with disabilities by banning discrimination and requiring employers to accommodate disabilities (e.g., by providing a magnified computer screen for a vision-impaired person). However, studies of the consequences of the employment provisions of ADA show that the Act has led to less employment of disabled workers.