Poverty (Number 1 Goal of the SDG) of Disabled People through Disability Studies and Ability Studies Lenses: A Scoping Review

Abstract

According to the World Bank, the world will not meet the SDG of ending extreme poverty in 2030. Disabled people live disproportionally below the poverty line. Many societal developments and discussions can influence the poverty level of disabled people. This study aimed to better understand the academic engagement with the poverty of disabled people in general and in Canada. To fulfill this aim, we performed a scoping review of academic abstracts obtained from SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST, and Web of Science. We performed a frequency count and a content analysis of abstracts containing the terms “poverty” or “impoverish*” or “socioeconomic” or “SES” or “income”. We ascertained how the abstracts engaged with the poverty of disabled people in general and in Canada and in conjunction with keywords linked to a select set of societal developments and discussions we saw as impacting poverty and being impacted by poverty. We also looked at the use of concepts coined to discuss ability judgments and social problems with being occupied, two areas that impact the poverty of disabled people. We found that disabled people were mentioned in 0.86% of the abstracts using the term “poverty” in general and 4.1% (88 abstracts) for Canada. For the terms “impoverish*”, “socioeconomic”, “SES”, and “income”, the numbers were 3.15% in general and 0.94% for Canada. The poverty of disabled people who also belong to other marginalized groups was rarely covered. Our qualitative content analysis revealed that many of the hit-count positive abstracts did not cover the poverty of disabled people. We found 22 relevant abstracts that covered the poverty of disabled people in conjunction with technologies, eight in conjunction with accessibility not already mentioned under technology, eight with intersectionality, seven with “activis*” or advocacy, three with sustainability, two with climate change, and none for burnout or ally. The occupation and ability judgment-focused concepts were rarely or not at all employed to discuss the poverty of disabled people. Our findings suggest many gaps in the coverage of the poverty of disabled people that need to be fixed.

1. Introduction

According to the World Bank, the world will not meet the SDG of ending extreme poverty in 2030 [1]. It is argued that “it is critical to tackle poverty in all its dimensions. Countries cannot adequately address poverty and inequality without improving people’s well-being, including more equitable access to health, education and basic infrastructure” [1]. In the key SDG document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” [2], it is stated in point 23 that 80% of persons with disabilities live in poverty [2]. The UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities [3] highlights many social problems and barriers disabled people face in their lived reality. As such, it is not surprising that disabled people are disproportionally represented among poor people [4]. Given the high percentage of disabled people living in poverty, it is essential to understand the unique experiences of disabled people living in poverty. The academic literature is one source of knowledge. Therefore, it is important to analyze how and to what extent the academic literature covers the poverty of disabled people and to identify potential gaps in the coverage. By doing so, we can better inform policies and interventions that address the complex poverty challenges faced by disabled people in poverty. This study aimed to better understand the academic engagement with the poverty of disabled people, and we first asked: (1) How often are terms depicting disabled people mentioned in abstracts focusing on poverty in general and in Canada? Under this question we generated data on the presence of (a) different disability terms; (b) intersectional phrases depicting disabled people who also belong to another marginalized group; (c) phrases linked to other marginalized groups not linked to disabled people, and (d) -isms terms used to highlight negative lived realities experienced by marginalized groups, including disabled people.

“Persons with disabilities face persistent inequality in social, economic and political spheres and are disadvantaged in all areas covered by the SDGs” [4] (p. 13). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), articles 12, 27, and 28, are listed as three international normative frameworks relevant for ending poverty and hunger for all persons with disabilities (SDGs 1 and 2) [4] (p. 33). Many societal developments and societal discussions can impact the poverty level of disabled people, as for example evident by the many problems in the lived reality the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities outlines. To provide two examples: scientific and technological advancements impact poverty [5,6,7], including the poverty of disabled people [8,9]. It is argued that “radical change in economic paradigms and societal structures that drive poverty and disability may be required for the effective adoption of assistive technology and closure of capability gaps” [5] (p. 1). Discussions are taking place under the header of various science and technology governance and technology-focused ethics fields on decreasing the potential negative effects and increasing the potential positive effects of scientific and technological advancements. As for the second example, there is the issue that one is expected to be an active citizen, to be an activist shaping society. In September 2019, the UN Secretary-General called for a decade of action related to sustainable development from for example “youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia, and other stakeholders” [10]. However, disabled people face many problems with being activists [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. Other areas of important societal developments and discussions we covered were sustainability, climate change, emergency and disaster planning, preparedness and management, environmental issues, well-being, intersectionality, and equity, diversity, and inclusion.

We asked as the second question: (2) How often are terms linked to sustainability, climate change, emergency and disaster planning, preparedness and management, environmental issues, well-being, the 111 indicators of four of the well-being composite measure (The Social Determinants of Health (SDH), The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIWB), the OECD Better Life Index, and the Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) matrix), intersectionality, activism, equity, diversity and inclusion, science and technology governance concepts, technology focused ethics fields, and international normative documents mentioned in conjunction with the poverty of disabled people?

Finally, there are many occupation-focused concepts [23] that are used to discuss social problems people including disabled people experience in being occupied, which could be used to discuss the impact of the poverty of disabled people on being occupied and the impact of being occupied as a disabled person on poverty. The concepts of occupational rights, occupational injustice, occupational justice, occupational alienation, occupational deprivation, occupational apartheid, and occupational marginalization are used to discuss the problems and barriers people, including disabled people, experience in obtaining an occupation. Occupational engagement, occupational identity, occupational satisfaction, occupational dysfunction, and occupational imbalance are used to engage with occupational quality.

Furthermore, there are many ability judgment-focused concepts, such as ableism, disablism, internalized ableism, internalized disablism, ability security, ability insecurity, ability equity, ability inequity, ability equality, ability inequality, ability privilege, ability discrimination, ability oppression, ability apartheid, ability obsolescence, ability consumerism, ability commodification, ableism foresight, ability governance, ableism governance, and technology-focused ability judgment terms, such as techno-ableism and techno-supercrip [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37], which have been developed within the disability rights movement [38] and the fields of disability studies [39,40] and ability-based studies [27,41,42,43,44,45,46] to analyze ability-based expectations, judgments, norms, and conflicts. All these ability-judgment-based concepts could be used to discuss the topic of poverty of disabled people. Therefore, we asked: (3) How often are occupation and ability judgment-focused concepts employed to discuss the poverty of disabled people?

The remainder of the article is structured as follows. Section 1.1 provides a literature review on poverty and Section 1.2 on the poverty of disabled people. Section 2 covers the method, study design, the research questions, the theoretical framework and lenses used for the analysis, the strategies for the selection of the sources, data analysis, and limitation. Section 3 provides a summary of the quantitative results (Section 3.1 with full results in the Appendix A) and the results of the qualitative content analysis (Section 3.2). Section 4 is the discussion, with subsections based on the three RQs, and Section 5 is the conclusion, which includes implications of our study and future research possibilities based on our study.

1.1. Impact of Poverty

Poverty is reported to impact many topics, such as health [47,48,49,50,51], school exclusion [52], school dropout [53], students university experience [54], immigrant and minority students’ educational achievements [55], parenting behavior [56], parent–child relationships [57], child welfare interventions [58], child labor [59], the economic cost of childhood poverty [60,61], conflict [62], suicide [63], collective action [64], Black communities [65], racial discrimination [66], terrorism [67], gendered experiences, such as menstruation [68], coping and defense behaviors [69], working poor men [70], tobacco use [71], and human development index [72], to name a few. Recently, a poverty-related stress scale was introduced [73]. Beyond poverty seen within the framework of income, there are poverty phrases that engage with specific areas of deprivation, such as “capability poverty”, coined by Sen [74,75] and used by others [76,77,78], which is about not being able to have a good life due to lived circumstances and for which a capability poverty measure exists [79,80,81].

Many sources see technology as a means to eradicate poverty [5,6,82,83,84], but technologies are also seen to increase [7] or not affect poverty [8]. “Global human progress occurs in a complex web of interactions between society, technology and the environment as driven by governance and infrastructure management capacity among nations” [85] (p. 3700). Concepts such as “technology poverty” [9], “information poverty”, “digital poverty” [86,87], and “techno-poor disabled” [36] were coined to highlight the negative effect of not having access to or wanting to use certain technologies, as was the term “accessibility poverty”. Accessibility poverty is a “situation of low accessibility that severely restricts a person’s ability to participate in the activities deemed normal in a particular society” [88], such as transportation [89,90,91,92,93].

People living in poverty are affected by environmental issues, and poverty is covered in conjunction with various environmental issues, including climate change and how to deal with emergencies and disasters [94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109]. It is argued that poverty reduction strategies require engagement with extreme weather events [110].

• According to the World Bank,

“Sustained poverty reduction requires that households not only make income and welfare gains but that they are also protected from shocks and setbacks—including extreme weather events. These events are increasing in frequency due to climate change and can result in lost assets and investments, limiting welfare gains for many years. Monitoring and measuring the global burden of extreme weather events, especially on the poorest and most vulnerable, is essential to protect people. More than half the global population—around 4.5 billion people—are at high risk of experiencing extreme weather events, such as floods, drought, cyclones, or heatwaves. About 2.3 billion of them are poor (living on less than $6.85 per day), and almost 400 million are extremely poor (living on less than $2.15 per day), according to 2020 data” [110].

It is noted that “A global movement is underway to harness the power of coordinated state policy to address the significant and interrelated challenges of environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, and energy insecurity” [111] (p. 1).

Poverty is seen as one factor to negatively impact adaptive capacity and sensitivity to climate change [112] (p. 668). It is noted: “While climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies are imperative, Canada is experiencing considerable challenges in terms of the identification of such strategies and their operationalization, especially among pockets of the population who are already particularly vulnerable through, for example, poverty, unemployment, loss of traditional cultures, substandard education systems and inadequate health care” [113] (p. 223).

• And Desmond Tutu stated:

“Adaptation is becoming a euphemism for social injustice on a global scale. While the citizens of the rich world are protected from harm, the poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh reality of climate change in their everyday lives. Put bluntly, the world’s poor are being harmed through a problem that is not their own. No community with a sense of justice, compassion or respect for basic human rights should accept the current adaptation pattern. Leaving the world’s poor to sink or swim with their meagre resources in the face of the threat posed by climate change is morally wrong. Unfortunately, as the Human Development Report 2007/2008 powerfully demonstrates, this is precisely what is happening. We are drifting into a world of ‘adaptation apartheid’” [114].

This issue was addressed at COP27, “emphasizing the urgent need for substantial commitments and actions to support marginalized communities in adapting to climate change and alleviating poverty” [115] (p. 1770), [116].

1.2. Poverty of Disabled People

All the issues covered in Section 1.1 impact disabled people, see for example the many problems for disabled people in relation to sustainability, climate change, environmental activism and issues, and environmental and disaster planning, preparedness and management, including a lack of coverage [20,21,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135]. It is highlighted that national income poverty data disaggregated by disability “show that the proportion of persons with disabilities living under the national or international poverty line is higher, and in some countries double, than that of persons without disabilities” [4]. The same data show that disabled people are in greater danger of experiencing poverty because “on the one hand higher basic daily living costs (that increase barriers to full participation in society), and on the other lower income due to limited access to the labour market” [136] (p. 4) citing [137]. “Persons with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than persons without disabilities due to barriers in society such as discrimination, limited access to education and employment and lack of inclusion in livelihood and other social programmes” [4].

As for Canada, it is stated on the website of the Canadian group “Disability without Poverty” [138] that, “in 2021, people with disabilities were twice as likely to live in poverty in Canada than those without” [138] (p. 6); and in the 2023 report card for Canada, their webpage states further that “Statistics Canada is projecting that in 2022, with the elimination of all temporary pandemic measures, poverty rates will rise back up to pre-pandemic levels” which was 27.2% [138] (p. 9) (source used [139]). Many other numbers can be found at [138] (source used [139,140,141]).

• Achieving the target of ending poverty and hunger

“remains a path full of obstacles. Persons with disabilities face physical, social, economic and/or environmental barriers to participation, which may lead to poverty and hunger. For instance, lack of accessibility in the physical environment and discrimination may prevent persons with disabilities from entering the school system, restricting their skills, knowledge and future ability to work and produce economic value. Those same barriers may prevent persons with disabilities from entering the labour market, or may limit the kind and amount of work they can do, lowering their incomes” [4] (p. 32).

The poverty of disabled people is often caused by not being employed in the first place [142,143,144,145], not having a good-quality job [146,147,148,149], not being paid equally [150], often being paid below minimum wage [151], and a lack of occupational advancements [152]. Many equity, diversity, and inclusion-related phrases and EDI policy frameworks are used to flag and improve the negative workplace situation of marginalized people, including disabled people [148], which could be used to discuss the issue of poverty and being occupied. However, it is noted that problems exist in how disabled people are engaged with in EDI discussions [148]. The many concepts focusing on the social problems with being occupied [23] could also be used to discuss the impact of the poverty of disabled people on being occupied and the impact of being occupied as a disabled person on poverty.

According to the United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities”, to end poverty and hunger for persons with disabilities, a number of actions should be considered:

• “Design social protection policies and programmes to include persons with disabilities.
• Remove barriers and obstacles that persons with disabilities face in accessing and fully benefiting from social protection on an equal basis with others.
• Sensitize personnel of grant offices about barriers experienced by persons with disabilities to access social protection and approaches to overcome these barriers.
• Improve access to and accessibility of banking and other financial services, including mobile banking.
• Disaggregate data on poverty and hunger by disability status.
• Establish national monitoring and evaluation systems that periodically assess all social protection programmes regarding inclusion and positive impact on the situation of persons with disabilities” [4] (p. 3).

Strategies to deal with the energy and fuel poverty of disabled people are listed on page 10 of [4]. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programs aim to enhance social inclusion for persons with disabilities and their families while reversing the vicious cycle of poverty and disability [4]. Many poverty reduction strategies exist, but so do analyses that question the usefulness of the wordings of such strategies for disabled people [153,154].

To conclude, given the far-reaching effects of poverty on disabled people and that disabled people disproportionally live below the poverty line, it is essential to understand the unique experiences of disabled people living in poverty. Therefore, it is important to analyze how and to what extent the academic literature covers the poverty of disabled people and to identify potential gaps in the coverage. By doing so, we can better inform policies and interventions that address the complex poverty challenges faced by disabled people in poverty. We envision that our results will enrich academic and non-academic discussions around the poverty of disabled people.

We found three prior literature reviews on the poverty of disabled people: one from 1999, one from 2011, and one from 2017 [155,156,157]. The one from 1999 covered disability and its relationship to poverty, including education, employment, income, and access to basic social services [156]. The one from 2011 looked at the evidence base for the link between poverty, disability, and health in low- and middle-income countries, concluding that there is a “current lack of strong evidence on the links between disability, poverty and health in LMICs upon which to build global policy and programming” [155] (p. 2). The third one from 2017 also looked at the existing evidence of linkage between poverty and disabled people, concluding that there is “strong evidence for a link between disability and poverty in LMICs and an urgent need for further research and programmatic/policy action to break the cycle” [157] (p. 1).

The focus of our scoping review is different (see Figure 1). We analyzed the overall engagement with disabled people in the poverty-focused academic literature covering many different aspects of that coverage.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study Design

Scoping studies are used to investigate the state of research on a given topic [158,159]. Our scoping study focuses on the extent of academic research that has been conducted on the interface of poverty and disabled people. Our study followed a modified version of a scoping review outlined by [160]. We fulfilled all the requirements of the Prisma chart for scoping reviews [161], with the exception that we decided not to use a flow chart as a figure, but to provide the same information under the search strategy as a table.

2.2. Theoretical Frameworks and Lenses

We interpreted our findings through the lens of the field of disability studies, which investigates the social, lived experience of disabled people [39,40], including disablism, the systemic discrimination disabled people experience [38], and the field of ability-based studies (the three strands of ability-based studies: ability expectation and ableism studies [27,41], studies in ableism [42,43,44], and critical studies of ableism [45,46]), which focuses on the investigation of ability-based expectations, judgments, norms, and conflicts [26]. We make use of the ability judgment-focused concepts coined by the disability rights movement and the fields of disability studies and ability-based studies [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]. Many of these concepts have been applied not only to disabled people and their relationship with non-disabled people, but also to the relationship between humans in general and between humans and nature [27,162], which in turn impacts many societal issues, including environmental issues, which in turn impacts the issue of poverty.

We also use the lens of empowerment. The community-based rehabilitation matrix [163] has empowerment as one of its indicators. Empowerment is mentioned in the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in relation to women with disabilities [3], and the UN Flagship report on Disability and Development uses empowerment [4]. Empowerment is often situated within the context of social change [164,165,166,167,168,169,170]. “Empowerment is broadly described as the process and outcome of addressing disempowerment, whereas disempowerment refers to the exclusion or absence of power, resources, and decision-making capacity due to marginalization, disenfranchisement, and other structural, institutional, and discursive constraints” [171]. “Empowerment theory assumes that empowerment takes on different forms for different people” [172] (p. 509). As such, empowerment will be different for different disabled people and different based on different ability expectations, which therefore will influence how to deal with the poverty of disabled people. It is argued that empowerment is an important facet of dealing with poverty [173], women in poverty [174,175], poverty reduction [176,177,178,179], and the SDGs [180,181]. It is argued that, “from a capability empowerment perspective, poverty signifies the lack of basic capabilities to function” [182] (p. 244). As for disabled people, it is argued that approaches are needed that link poverty and disability with empowerment strategies and changes in attitudes [163,176,177,183,184]. It is argued “that new approaches involving the participation of those people most affected by poverty, and which focus on their capabilities and rights to ensure they are empowered, need to be considered". Basically, people living in poverty need to feel empowered to find their own solutions [184] (p. 347); however, see [185] for questioning to automatically equate participation with empowerment.

In the present review, empowerment builds upon and aligns with the disability studies and ability studies lenses. This includes attention to the implications with respect to disempowerment in domains where exclusion is occurring and, conversely, areas where better data and practice might empower people with disabilities from individual-community levels.

2.3. Identification of Research Questions

This study aimed to better understand the academic engagement with the poverty of disabled people in non-health-related contexts in general and in Canada, asking three research questions:

The following research questions were answered in the study to fulfill this aim.

(1)

How often are terms depicting disabled people mentioned in abstracts focusing on poverty in general and in Canada? Under this question, we generated data on the presence of (a) different disability terms; (b) intersectional phrases depicting disabled people who also belong to another marginalized group; (c) phrases linked to other marginalized groups not linked to disabled people; and (d) -isms terms used to highlight negative lived realities experienced by marginalized groups, including disabled people.

(2)

How often are terms linked to sustainability, climate change, emergency and disaster planning, preparedness and management, environmental issues, well-being, the 111 indicators of four of the well-being composite measure (The Social Determinants of Health (SDH) [186,187,188,189,190,191,192], The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIWB) [193,194], the OECD Better Life Index [195], and the Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) matrix [163,196,197]), intersectionality, activism, equity, diversity and inclusion, science and technology governance concepts, technology-focused ethics fields, and international normative documents mentioned in conjunction with disabled people?

(3)

How often are occupation and ability judgment-focused concepts employed to discuss the poverty of disabled people?

2.4. Data Sources and Data Collection Strategy and Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

Between 28 February and 10 March 2024, we searched the 70 academic databases of EBSCO-HOST and the academic database Scopus, which includes Medline and Web of Science, with no time restrictions to obtain content relevant to answer our research questions. The databases contain many journals with the terms “disability” or “disability studies” in the title and contain many journals covering EDI, science and technology governance and technology-based ethics, environmental issues, and well-being. As for the inclusion criteria, scholarly peer-reviewed journals were included in the EBSCO-HOST search, and reviews, peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, and editorials in Scopus and the Web of Science search were set to all document types. As for the exclusion criteria, data not fitting the search strategies, research questions, and data not being in English were excluded. In

Table 1. Search strategies used and abstracts selected.

Strategy	Sources	Search Terms	Hits	Results in Tables
Strategy 1a	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (poverty)	121,455/306,959/71,671 =500,085	Online abstract search
Strategy 1b	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (poverty) AND ABS (“disabled” OR “disabled people” OR “disabled person” OR “visually impaired” OR “deaf*” OR “neurodiv*” OR “ADHD” OR “autism” OR “ASD” OR “attention deficit” OR “Disabled women” OR “disabled woman” OR “Dyslexia” OR “visual impair*” OR “hearing impair*” OR “physically impair*” OR “physical impair*” OR “cognitive impair*” OR “wheelchair” OR “disabilit*”)	3517/4321/2198=10,036-dup=4376 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 1c	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (poverty) and ABS (“mental health”)	3532/4962/2540=10989-dup=4300 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 2a	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science/	ABS (Poverty) AND ABS (“Canad*”)	1479/2202/924=4586-dup=2139 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 2b	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (poverty) AND ABS (“Canad*”) AND ABS of disability terms from strategy 1b	63/52/44=159-dup=88 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 2c	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (poverty) AND ABS (“Canad*”) AND ABS (“mental health”)	113/103/83=301-dup=139 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 3a	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (“impoverish*” OR socioeconomic OR SES OR income)	657,344/1,617,329/464,687=2,739,360	Online abstract search
Strategy 3b	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (“impoverish*” OR socioeconomic OR SES OR income) AND ABS of disability terms from strategy 1b	20,840/49,370/16,309=86,519	Not used for searches
Strategy 3c	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (“impoverish*” OR socioeconomic OR SES OR income) AND ABS (“Canad*”)	12,580/40,589/9240=62,409	Online abstract search
Strategy 3d	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (“impoverish*” OR socioeconomic OR SES OR income) AND ABS (“Canad*”) AND ABS of disability terms from strategy 1b	513/495/372=1380-dup=589	Desktop abstract search
Strategy 3e	Scopus/EBSCO-HOST/Web of Science	ABS (“impoverish*” OR socioeconomic OR SES OR income) AND ABS (“Canad*”) AND ABS (“mental health”)	763/931/648=2339-dup=899 (downloaded)	Desktop abstract search

, we outline our search strategies, the original hit numbers, and the numbers of abstracts downloaded after eliminating duplicates of abstracts if we downloaded the abstracts. Given the aim and research questions, we used different search strategies to obtain abstracts for our analysis.

In stage 1 of the strategies, we obtained hit counts for the term “poverty” and some terms that we see also to be linked to poverty (“impoverish*”, socioeconomic, SES, and income).

In stage 2, we searched these results for the term “Canada” to obtain some results for one country.

In stage 3, we searched the results of poverty of stage 1 (not Canada) and stage 2 (Canada) for different disability-related terms. As part of the disability-related terms, we searched for the phrase “mental health” as a separate term and not as part of the list of disability terms as mental health discussions are often different.

In stage 4, we searched the result of the non-poverty terms within Canada for the disability terms and for mental health.

Altogether, we generated 10 sets of abstracts for analysis with the following number of abstracts.

(1) Poverty (500,085 abstracts); (2) Poverty and Canada (2139 abstracts); (3) Poverty and disability terms (4376 abstracts); (4) Poverty and mental health (4300 abstracts); (5) Poverty and Canada and disability terms (88 abstracts); (6) Poverty and Canada and mental health (139 abstracts); (7) other poverty-related terms (2,739,360 abstracts); (8) other poverty-related terms and Canada (62,409 abstracts); (9) other poverty-related terms and Canada and disability terms (589 abstracts); and (10) other poverty-related terms and Canada and mental health (899 abstracts).

Some of the strategies generated so many abstracts that the abstracts were not downloaded and the searches for keywords were performed online using the search engines of the databases. For other strategies, we downloaded the abstracts and performed the searches for keywords on the desktop.

For the online quantitative search, no duplicates were eliminated, and the recorded results reflect the three numbers obtained for the three databases for each search term.

For the desktop quantitative analysis and the qualitative content analysis, we downloaded the set of abstracts indicated using the citation export function of the databases and the import function of Endnote v.20, year 2020 software.

Endnote v.20, year 2020 software was also used to eliminate duplicates due to abstracts being present in more than one database. The final number of each set of abstracts was exported as one WORD Office file from Endnote v20, year 2020 software and transformed into one PDF file. The PDFs were used for the quantitative and qualitative analyses.

2.5. Data Analysis

To answer the research questions, we used two approaches. We used manifest coding and a qualitative content analysis approach.

For the quantitative analysis (manifest coding), two of the three authors of this study independently searched the abstracts using the online search of the databases accessed through the University, and the advanced search function in Adobe Acrobat Pro, year 2024 Software to determine how many abstracts contained the various terms linked to the terms in the

Table A1. Hit counts obtained through online search of abstracts (column 2,4,5) and desktop search of downloaded abstracts (column 3) containing the term poverty or poverty-linked terms for disability-related terms, intersectional phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group, disability-related terms mostly seen within a medical framework, phrases linked to other marginalized groups and negative -isms seen to be experienced by marginalized groups.

Terms	Strategy 1a Poverty 500,290 Abstracts = 100%	Strategy 2a Poverty AND Canada 2139 Abstracts = 100%	Strategy 3a (“Impoverish*” OR Socioeconomic OR SES OR Income) 2,739,360 Abstracts = 100%	Strategy 3c (“Impoverish*” OR Socioeconomic OR SES OR Income) AND Canada 62,409 Abstracts = 100%
Disability terms
“Disability minorit*”	7	0	66	0
“Ability minority”	0	0	0	0
Disabled	2883	38	10,608	241
“Disabled people” OR “disabled person*”	875	16/1	2039	23
“Disabled activis*” OR “activist* with disabilit*”	4	0	1	0
“Disabled artist*” OR artist* with disabilities	16	0	28	4
“with disabilities”	4766	72	16,450	461
“people with disabilities” OR “person* with disabilities”	1807	23	4801	145
“learning disabilit*”	423	14	163	9
Dyslexia	12	0	421	0
“Impair*”	ND	51	ND	ND
“visually impair*” Or “visual impair*”	273	2	2824	33
“hearing impair*”	171	0	1463	10
“physically impair*” OR “physical impair*”	156	1	771	7
“cognitive impair*”	449	0	5910	46
Deaf*	76	0	1119	4
“Adhd” OR “autism” OR “attention deficit“	932	37	12,145	335
“neurodiver*”	3	0	40	0
Wheelchair	57	0	520	7
“Disability studies”	72	15	193	4
Intersectional phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group
Intersectionality	903	32	2533	78
“Indigenous disabled” “disabled Indigenous” OR “Indigenous person with disabilit*” OR “Indigenous people with disabilit*”	0 (0fulltext)	0	0 (full text 8)	0 (full text 0)
“Black disabled” “disabled Black” OR “Black person with disabilit*” OR “Black people with disabilit*”	0 (full text 0)	0	0 (full text 3)	0 (full text 0)
“Autistic women” OR “women with autism” OR “Autistic woman” OR “woman with autism”	0	0	16	4
“Disabled women” OR “disabled woman” OR “women with disabilities” OR “Women with a disability” OR “Woman with a disability”	283	4	719	24
Disability-related terms mostly seen within a medical framework
“mental health”	16,512	344	88,521	3419
“mental illness”	3029	70	10,625	445
“Patient*”	20,436	620	290,642	6425
Phrases linked to other marginalized groups
Women or woman	57,959	1080	344,290	8625
Gender	34,107	313	219,207	5447
race	25,498	73	128,195	1630
Black	22,219	104	98,285	1071
“ethnic group*”	4592	5	26,667	425
“racialized minorit*”	9	1	46	16
“visible minorit*”	59	33	958	799
“ethnic minorit*”	3930	0	21,229	343
Minorit*	12,692	182	76,245	2194
“Indigenous people*” OR “first nations” OR “Metis” OR “Inuit” OR “aboriginal”	3064	712	9772	2816
“LGB*”	503	64	2300	175
Transgender	700	20	3316	174
“Homeless*”	7395	334	10,714	758
Negative -isms seen to be experienced by marginalized groups
Sexism	545	6	699	10
Racism	5576	98	8208	374
Colonialism	1375	50	1692	174
Ableism	35	3	52	0 (25 ableism full text)
Disablism OR disableism	8	0	10	0 (3 disablism or disableism full text)
Ableist	24	1	59	11 (13 full text)
Disableist OR disablist	4	0	4	1

ND means Not determined.

,

Table A2. Hit counts in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people (Table 1) for disability-related terms, intersectional phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group, disability-related terms mostly seen within a medical framework, phrases linked to other marginalized groups and negative -isms seen to be experienced by marginalized groups.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“Disability minorit*”	2	0	0	0	0	0
“ability minorit*”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Disabled	38	9	1125	66	153	1
“Disabled people*” OR “disabled person*”	23	0	413	16	34	0
“Disabled activis*”	0	0	5	0	0	0
“Disabled artist*”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“with disabilit*”	72	3	3069	155	223	14
“people with disabilit*”	21	1	818	41	52	0
“learning disab*”	14	1	265	26	9	3
Dyslexia	0	0	9	1	0	0
“Impair*”	18	13	517	213	143	59
“visually impaired”	2	0	13	0	3	0
“hearing impair*”	0	0	36	6	6	0
“physically impaired”	0	0	4	9	0	0
“cognitive impair*”	0	0	47	0	26	0
“visual impairment”	0	0	47	0	45	0
“physical impairment*”	1	0	23	1	6	0
Deaf*	0	0	110	8	6	0
“Adhd” OR “autism” OR “attention deficit“	34	21	218	163	379	74
“neurodiver*”	0	0	3	0	0	0
Wheelchair	0	0	41	1	6	0
“Disability studies” (abstract)	15	0	96	3	22	3
Disability-related terms mostly seen within a medical framework
“Patient*”	165	98	990	1483	437	532
Mental health	20	329	710	11,306	229	2721
Mental illness	2	30	170	820	41	143
Intersectional phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group
Intersectionality	3	3	47	27	9	12
“Autistic women” OR “women with autism”	0	0	0	0	15	0
“Disabled women” OR “disabled woman” OR “women with disabilities” OR “Women with a disability” OR “Woman with a disability”	3	0	219	13	31	1
“Indigenous disabled” “disabled Indigenous” OR “Indigenous person with disabilitie” OR “indignous people with disabilities”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Black disabled” “disabled Black” OR “Black person with disabilitie” OR “Black people with disabilities”	0	0	3	1	0	0
Phrases linked to other marginalized groups
Women or woman	85	105	1601	2595	411	523
gender	14	24	649	840	118	282
race	6	9	391	415	26	54
Black	1 (not disabled person)	15	250	651	6	65
“ethnic group*”	0	0	65	12	1	4
“racialized minorit*”	0	0	0	0	0	1
“visible minorit*”	0	4	0	2	6	30
“Ethnic minorit*”	0	0	5	0	0	0
Minorit*	1	21	277	388	18	92
“Indigenous people*” OR “first nations” OR “Metis” OR “Inuit” OR “aboriginal”	12	50	84	144	126	140
“LGB*”	0	12	30	114	4	49
Transgender	1	4	26	160	5	44
Homeless*	15	66	296	862	68	142
Negative -isms seen to be experienced by marginalized groups
Sexism	0	1	8	16	0	0
Racism	1	11	44	196	1	17
Colonialism	0	6	15	17	3	5
Ableism	3	0	10	1	2	0
Disablism OR disableism	0	0	4	0	0	0
Ableist	0	0	5	0	3	0
disableist	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A3. Hit counts for well-being terms in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“Well being” OR “well-being” or “wellbeing”	9	42	496	1293	64	316
“social wellbeing” or “social well-being” or “social well being”	0	1	8	16	8	1
“environmental wellbeing” or “environmental well-being” or “environmental well being”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Subjective wellbeing” or “Subjective well-being” or “Subjective well being”	0	0	11	25	5	1
“Societal wellbeing” or “Societal well-being” or “Societal well being”	0	0	0	0	0	2
“Psychological wellbeing” or “Psychological well-being” or “Psychological well being”	0	0	13	96	2	23
“Emotional wellbeing” or “Emotional well-being” or “Emotional well being”	0	0	9	43	2	4
“Economic wellbeing” or “Economic well-being” or “Economic well being”	0	0	42	25	0	2
Other search terms we saw as crucial for the discussions of a good life
Solidarity	1	38	30	59	3	0
Identit*	4	15	109	229	32	72
Interdependen*	0	1	16	16	0	1
Stigma*	6	12	387	615	51	115
Stereotype*	0	0	20	24	2	0
Justice	3	48	283	322	33	12
Autonomy	1	3	43	24	16	17
“Self-determination”	0	0	52	18	4	0s
“good life”	1	0	2	1	0	0
“social good”	0	0	2	0	0	0
“Health equity”	3	3	32	33	6	8
Burnout	0	1	2	14	2	20
Ally or allies or allyship	2	0	9	5	0	0
Stressor*	0	5	35	394	10	75
Activist*	0	0	49	16	0	0
activism	6	1	28	7	4	0
Accessibility	2	1	136	64	15	17

,

Table A4. Hit counts for the terms used for the various “measures” of 21 “wellbeing measures” in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“Community based rehabilitation”	0	0	5	2	0	0
“Community rehabilitation”	0	0	0	1	0	0
“Determinant* of health”	2	19	135	171	20	60
“Social determinant* of health”	2	17	103	132	15	46
“Meaning in Life”	0	2	0	9	0	2
“Well-being index”	0	0	0	2	0	0
“Satisfaction with life scale”	0	0	0	2	0	3
“Capabilit* approach”	0	0	65	1	0	0
“Perceived Life Satisfaction”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Aqol	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Better life index”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Brief Inventory of Thriving”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Canadian Index of well being”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Community based rehabilitation matrix”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Flourishing Scale”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Index of well-being”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Scale of Positive and Negative Experience”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“The Disability and Wellbeing Monitoring Framework and Indicators”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“The Quality of Being Scale”	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A5. Presence of community-based rehabilitation matrix indicators in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

		Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Secondary Indicator	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Health		160	1060	6327	19,944	1700	5315
	“healthcare” OR “health care”	62	84	1160	1916	289	527
	“Assistive technolo*”	3	0	54	0	7	2
	“Assistive device”	0	0	33	0	1	1
	“Health prevention”	0	1	0	14	1	3
	Rehabilitation	17	3	578	131	64	16
Education		53	42	2283	1285	221	297
	“Childhood education”	0	0	20	16	0	0
	“Primary education”	0	0	17	8	0	0
	“Secondary education”	0	0	23	1	1	5
	“Non-formal education“	0	0	0	0	0	0
	“Life-long learning”	0	0	0	3	0	0
Livelihood		0	0	119	49	0	0
	“Skills development”	0	0	11	3	0	0
	Self-Employment	0	0	22	2	0	1
	“Financial services”	0	0	11	0	0	0
	“Wage employment”	0	0	1	0	0	0
	“Social protection”	0	0	197	35	0	2
social		98	235	4990	5831	590	894
Social media (added by us)		1	2	9	32	4	5
	“social relationship”	0	0	8	1	0	0
	Family	39	43	1207	2387	209	334
	“Personal Assistan*”	0	0	10	2	0	0
	Culture	1	10	130	214	333	18
	“Recreation” OR “leisure” OR “sport*”	11	5	122	183	35	2/21/35
	“Access to justice”	0	0	6	3	7	0
Empower*		4	8	225	236	6	4
	Communication	168	4	213	125	35	14
	“Social mobilization”	0	0	1	2	0	0
	“Political participation”	0	0	6	4	0	0
	“Self-help groups”	0	0	1	9	9	2
	“Disabled people’s organizations”	0	0	0	0	9	0

,

Table A6. Presence of Canadian Index of Wellbeing indicators in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

		Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Secondary Indicator	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Social Relationship*		1	1	12	37	1	3
	“Social engagement”	0	0	3	0	0	0
	“Social Support”	0	0	109	0	0	0
	“Community safety”	0	0	3	4	0	0
“Social norm*”		0	0	6	10	1	1
	“Attitudes toward others”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Democratic engagement”		0	0	0	0	0	0
	Participation	8	10	567	254	146	50
	Communication	168	4	213	125	35	14
	Leadership	1	5	41	58	10	12
Education		53	42	2283	1285	221	297
	Competenc*	0	5	53	109	10	10
	knowledge	2	16	397	408	83	85
	Skill*	11	10	298	325	33	50
Environment*		10	35	694	1069	129	174
“Healthy population*”		0	0	1	0	0	4
	“personal well*”	0	0	11	7	0	1
	“Physical health”	1	8	75	349	25	103
	“Life expectanc*”	0	2	74	35	31	20
	“Mental health”	18	315	710	10,973	228	2765
	“functional health”	0	7	2	8	3	6
	“Lifestyle”	0	5	69	73	40	32
	“Public health”	4	42	466	806	97	220
	“healthcare” OR “health care”	62	84	1160	1916	289	527
Culture		1	10	130	214	27	18
“Living standard”		0	0	47	2	0	0
	Income*	100	74	1982	2327	839	1097
	“Economic security”	1	0	12	9	4	2
Time		ND	ND	ND	ND	ND	ND

,

Table A7. Presence of Better Life Index indicators in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Housing	23	89	652	851	323	206
Income	100	74	1982	2327	839	1097
Job*	4	0	230	57	45	11
Communit*	64	141	1719	3371	361	643
Education	53	42	2283	1285	221	297
Environment*	10	35	694	1069	129	174
“Physical environment”	0	1	20	12	3	2
“Civic Engagement”	0	0	1	4	0	0
Health	160	6327	6327	19944	1700	5315
“Life Satisfaction”	0	0	51	88	2	49
Safety	10	7	185	214	22	14
“Work life balance”	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A8. Presence of social determinants of health (SDH) indicators in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Income	100	74	1982	2327	839	1097
Education	53	42	2283	1285	221	297
Unemployment	3	5	325	427	25	34
“Job Security”	0	1	1	5	0	9
Employment	38	32	996	566	228	175
“Early Childhood Development”	0	0	8	18	2	1
“Food security/food lnsecurity”	6	47	250	617	34	172
Housing	23	89	500	851	323	206
“Social Exclusion”	5	5	250	144	1	0
“Social Safety Network”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Health Services”	1	21	190	860	47	212
Immigration	0	7	31	81	20	33
Globalization	1	3	46	50	2	8
Coping	7	4	103	302	21	63
Resilience	8	19	72	480	22	41
Adapt*	10	9	205	398	84	56
Discrimination	7	32	330	492	43	81
Genetic	0	0	74	33	17	39
Transportation	7	3	102	55	45	11
“vocational training”	0	0	22	6	0	0
“social integration”	0	1	19	35	0	7
Advocac*	2	3	113	94	10	19
Literacy	40	4	129	95	13	20
Walkability	0	0	1	5	3	4
“Social engagement”	0	0	8	12	3	1
“Social status”	0	0	20	38	3	4
“Socioeconomic status”	0	1	120	215	98	161

,

Table A9. Hit counts for some concepts linked to environmental issues mentioned in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“Environmental activism”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Environmental issues”	0	0	3	0	0	0
“Sustainability”	0	4	92	57	3	8
“Climate change”	0	1	53	140	2	16
“Emergency management”	0	0	4	1	0	0
“Disaster management”	0	0	4	2	0	0
“Disaster preparedness”	0	0	9	5	0	0
“Emergency preparedness”	0	0	4	3	0	0
“Disaster planning”	0	0	4	0	3	0
“Emergency planning”	0	0	2	0	0	0

,

Table A10. International documents mentioned in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” (CRPD)	2	0	46	5	5	3
“Convention on the Rights of the Child” (CRC)	0	0	7	3	1	0
“Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights”	0	0	6	2	0	0
“Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”	0	0	0	0	0	1
“International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A11. Hit counts for science and technology governance terms and technology-focused ethics terms in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Technolo*	9	12	308	170	27	30
“Technology governance”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Science and technology governance”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Anticipatory governance”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Democratizing science and technology”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Parliamentary technology assessment”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Participatory technology assessment“	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Responsible innovation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Responsible research and innovation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Technology assessment”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Transformative vision assessment”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Upstream engagement”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ethics	2	5	43	56	10	9
“AI-ethics”	0	0	0	0	0
“Bioethics”	1	6	7	10	0	0
“Computer science ethics”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Information technology ethics”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Nanoethics”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Neuroethics”	0	0	1	5	0	0
“Quantum ethics”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Robo-ethics”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Environmental ethics	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A12. The presence of 5 EDI policy frameworks and 13 EDI linked phrases in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms: 5 EDI Policy Frameworks and 13 EDI Linked Phrases	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
(“Athena SWAN” OR “See change with STEMM Equity Achievement” OR “Dimensions: equity, diversity and inclusion” OR “Science in Australia Gender Equity” OR “NSF ADVANCE”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“equity, diversity and inclusion” OR “equality, diversity and inclusion” OR “diversity, equity and inclusion” OR “diversity, equality and inclusion” OR “Belonging, Dignity, and Justice” OR “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging” OR “diversity, Dignity, and Inclusion” OR “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” OR “Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” OR “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility” OR “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability” OR “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization” OR “inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility” OR “justice, equity, diversity, identity”	0	0	0	0	0	0

,

Table A13. Hit counts for occupation-based conceptual terms in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
“occupational health”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational performance”	0	0	1	1	16	1
“occupational engagement”	0	0	1	1	0	0
“meaningful occupation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational participation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational justice”	0	0	3	0	0	0
“occupational injustice”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational experience”	0	0	1	0	0	0
“occupational adaptation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational deprivation”	0	0	3	0	0	0
“occupational identity”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“social occupation”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational behavior” or “occupational behaviour”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational potential”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational right*”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational balance”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational system”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational aspect”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational being”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational issues”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational value”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational apartheid”	0	0	1	0	0	0
“occupational disruption”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational integrity”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational pattern”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational satisfaction”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Occupational equity”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational inequity”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“occupational terminology”	0	0	0	0	0	0

and

Table A14. Hit counts for ability judgment-based terms, including technology-focused ability judgment terms and human enhancement-related terms, in PDFs of abstracts downloaded related to poverty and disabled people.

	Poverty Canada and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Poverty and Disability/Mental Health Terms		Other Poverty Terms and Disability/Mental Health Terms
Terms	Strategy 2b Poverty and Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms AND “Disabilit*” 88 Abstracts	Strategy 2c Poverty and Canada and “Mental Health” 139 Abstracts	Strategy 1b Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Disabled People Linked Terms 4376 Abstracts	Strategy 1c Poverty NOT Using Canada as a Search Term AND Mental Health 4300 Abstracts	Strategy 3d Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Disabled People Linked Terms 589 Abstracts	Strategy 3e Other Poverty-Related Terms AND Canada AND Mental Health 899 Abstracts
Abilit*	7	6	235	215	46	57
Ability judgments based concepts
Ableism	3	0	10	1	2	0
Internalized Ableism	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Ability security” OR “ability insecurity” or “ableism security” or “ableism insecurity”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Ability equity” or “ability inequity” or “ability equality” or “ability inequality” OR “ableism inequity” OR “ableism equity” or “ableism equality” or “ableism inequality”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ability privilege	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Ability discrimination” or “ableism discrimination”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Ability oppression” or “ableism oppression”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ability apartheid or ableism apartheid	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ability obsolescence or ableism obsolescence	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Ability consumerism” or “ableism consumerism” or “ability commodification” or “ableism commodification”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ability foresight or ableism foresight	0	0	0	0	0	0
Ability governance or ableism governance	0	0	0	0	0	0
Disablism	0	0	4	0	0	0
“internalized disablism”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Human Enhancement linked concepts
“human enhancement”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“human enhancement technolog*”	0	0	0	0	0	0
“Performance enhancement”	0	0	0	0	0	0
Posthuman	0	1	0	1	0	0
Supercrip	0	0	0	0	0	0
Superhuman	0	0	0	0	0	0
Cyborg	0	0	0	0	0	0
Transhuman	0	0	2	0	0	0
Technology linked ability judgment concepts
Technoableism or techno-ableism	0	0	0	0	0	0
Technodoping or techno-doping	0	0	0	0	0	0
Techno-poor	0	0	0	0	0	0
Techno-supercrip	0	0	0	0	0	0

in Appendix A. The two authors then compared the numbers for each keyword (peer debriefing). No differences were found between the authors.

For the qualitative analysis, we decided to perform a content analysis on abstracts containing the terms sustainability, climate change, intersectionality, burnout, ally, technology, accessibility, activis*, and advocacy because they cover different areas that impact how one deals with the poverty of disabled people. For the terms chosen, two of the three authors of the study used the comment function in Adobe Acrobat Pro, year 2024 Software for the coding procedure to independently ascertain first the relevant abstracts and then how disabled people were mentioned in conjunction with poverty and the chosen terms. Peer debriefing between the two authors was performed to compare the themes.

2.6. Trustworthiness Measures

Trustworthiness measures include confirmability, credibility, dependability, and transferability [198,199,200]. Peer debriefing was employed, as already outlined. As for transferability, we provide all the details needed so others can decide whether to apply our search approaches to other data sources, whether to use other disability terms and other keywords, and whether to perform a more in-depth analysis of terms based on the hit counts.

2.7. Limitation

The search was limited to specific academic databases, English language literature, and abstracts. As such, the findings are not to be generalized to all the academic literature, non-academic literature, or non-English literature. We also did not use every possible disability term or every possible term one could link to poverty. We also did not analyze content linked to the term “patient”. However, our findings allow conclusions to be made within the parameters of the searches. Also, all our hit-count numbers are a maximum and are very likely much lower due to false positives. Furthermore, there are potential duplicates within the abstract numbers of the online searches due to a given abstract being often present in more than one database. Finally, the numbers obtained from searched downloaded abstracts reflect the number of hits, not the number of abstracts. This means that if a given term shows up more than once in a given abstract, it counted more than once.

3. Results

The following abstracts were used: (1) Poverty (500,085 abstracts); (2) Poverty and Canada (2139 abstracts); (3) Poverty and disability terms (4376 abstracts); (4) Poverty and mental health (4300 abstracts); (5) Poverty and Canada and disability terms (88 abstracts); (6) Poverty and Canada and mental health (139 abstracts); (7) other poverty-related terms (2,739,360 abstracts); (8) other poverty-related terms and Canada (62,409 abstracts); (9) other poverty-related terms and Canada and disability terms (589 abstracts); and (10) other poverty-related terms and Canada and mental health (899 abstracts).

Abstracts from 1, 2, 7, and 8 were used in Table A1 to provide a sense of the answer to RQ1. Abstracts 1, 7, and 8 were not used for any other RQs. Table A2 used abstracts 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10, covering also RQ1. Abstracts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10 were used in all other appendix tables answering RQ2 and 3.

We report in Section 3.1 in a summary fashion our quantitative findings linked to RQ1–3. The actual data tables are in the appendix (Appendix A: Table A1, Table A2, Table A3, Table A4, Table A5, Table A6, Table A7, Table A8, Table A9, Table A10, Table A11, Table A12, Table A13 and Table A14).

In Section 3.2, we report on our qualitative content analysis linked to RQ2.

3.1. Quantitative Data

In Section 3.1.1, which covers RQ1, we report in Table A1 the search results of abstracts containing the term poverty or poverty-linked terms together with Canada or alone for (a) Disability terms; (b) Intersectional phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group; (c) Disability-related terms mostly seen within a medical framework; (d) Phrases linked to other marginalized groups; and (e) -isms seen to be experienced by marginalized groups. Table A2 covers the same keywords, but for abstracts containing the term poverty or poverty-linked terms together with Canada or alone and on top of the “disability terms” in Table 1 or “mental health”.

In Section 3.1.2, which covers RQ2, we provide the summary results for (a) well-being terms and other search terms we saw as crucial for the discussions of a good life (Appendix A: Table A3); (b) the mentioning of composite measures of well-being (Appendix A: Table A4); (c) the 111 indicators of the four composite well-being measures (Appendix A: Table A5, Table A6, Table A7 and Table A8); (d) environmental issue-related terms (Appendix A: Table A9); (e) international normative documents (Appendix A: Table A10); (f) science and technology governance terms and technology-based ethics fields (Appendix A: Table A11) and (g) EDI phrases and policy framework terms (Appendix A: Table A12).

In Section 3.1.3, we cover RQ3, reporting on occupation-focused concepts (Appendix A: Table A13) and ability judgment-focused concepts (Appendix A: Table A14).

3.1.1. RQ1: Visibility of Disabled People

If we compare the number of abstracts in Table A1, which used as sources abstracts covering poverty-related terms by themselves or together with “Canada” with an equivalent set of abstracts that contained, in addition, disability-related terms (Table A2) (so comparing, for example, the 500,290 abstracts for poverty (strategy 1a) (Table A1) with the 4376 abstracts that contained the term poverty as a search term AND Disabled people linked terms but not Canada (Table A2), the percentages presented below of the presence of disability-covering abstracts were generated.

The poverty of disabled people was covered in 0.86% of the abstracts containing the term “poverty” in general. If Canada was added, the number was 4.1%. For the terms “impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income”, the numbers related to disabled people were 0.94% for Canada and 3.15% in general.

For abstract numbers, we found 4376 abstracts covering poverty and disabled people in general and 88 focusing on Canada. As for mental health, the numbers were 4300 and 139. As for the terms “impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income” and “Canada” and the disability terms, the number was 589 abstracts. The number for “impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income” and “Canada” and “mental health" was 899 abstracts. The “impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income” terms were not looked at without “Canada” being present.

Looking at the different disability keywords in Table A1, an unevenness of mentioning of disability terms was evident. Few hits were obtained for intersectionality phrases containing disability terms with some other marginalized group. The terms “race”, “gender”, or “ethnic” were much more evident than any of the non-medical, individual disability terms. Ableism and disablism, isms linked to disabled people, were rarely mentioned.

Table A2 covers only sets of abstracts that contained disability terms. We did this to record which disability terms were present in our disability term sets as we did not generate sets of abstracts based on individual disability terms (except for mental health). Table A2 shows similar results to the ones in Table A1, for example that there was an unevenness of disability terms, and that ableism and disablism were rarely mentioned.

3.1.2. RQ2: Visibility of the Poverty of Disabled People in Abstracts Containing Various Keywords (Appendix A: Table A3, Table A4, Table A5, Table A6, Table A7, Table A8, Table A9, Table A10, Table A11 and Table A12)

Table A3, in the appendix, which covers various terms of well-being and other search terms, which we saw as important for discussing well-being, shows that, although the term well-being generated substantial hits, specific subareas of well-being did not. Terms such as “good life”, “social good”, or health equity had few hits. Burnout, allyship, and activism were other terms that did not have many hits, although activists and allies of disabled people are needed to work on decreasing poverty, and burnout is an increasingly recognized danger for activists.

Table A4, in the appendix, which covers the presence of 21 well-being measures, shows that, except for the phrases “determinants of health” and “social determinants of health", the other 19 terms generated few or no hits.

Table A5, Table A6, Table A7 and Table A8 in the appendix, which cover the 111 indicators of the Community-based rehabilitation matrix, the Canadian Index of well-being, the Better Life Index, and the social determinants of health, show a very uneven presence of indicator terms. Most terms with significant hits covered very broad concepts, such as “social”, “health”, “healthcare”, “education”, “culture”, “communication”, or “participation”, to just list a few. Many more specific terms were rarely or not at all present.

Table A9, in the appendix, which covers environment-based concepts, shows only some hits, with sustainability and climate change for some sets of abstracts. The set of abstracts covering mental health and poverty had the most hits for these two terms. Emergency and disaster management, planning, and preparedness generated few or no hits.

Table A10, in the appendix, which covers international convention and policy documents covering EDI groups, children, and climate change, shows only more than 10 hits for the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The other documents received fewer or no hits.

Table A11, in the appendix, which covers science and technology governance terms and technology-focused ethics terms, shows few or no hits for ethics and governance terms, although the term “technolog*” generated substantial hits.

Table A12, in the appendix, which covers EDI phrases and policy frameworks and EDI-deserving group-linked terms, shows no hits for the EDI phrases and EDI policy frameworks. However, individual words from these phrases had substantial hits.

3.1.3. RQ3: The Use of Occupation and Ability Judgment-Focused Concepts (Appendix A: Table A13 and Table A14)

Table A13, in the appendix, which covers occupation-based concepts, shows that occupation-based concepts generated few or no hits.

Table A14, which covers ability judgment-based concepts, shows few or no hits for ability expectation-based concepts, although the term “abilit*” generated many hits.

3.2. Qualitative Analysis of Content Covering the Poverty of Disabled People Linked to the Term’s Sustainability, Climate Change, Intersectionality, Burnout, Ally, Technology, Accessibility, Activis*, and Advocacy (for Answering RQ2)

In short, we found 22 relevant abstracts for technologies, eight for accessibility not already mentioned under technology, eight for intersectionality, seven for “activis*”or “advocacy”, three for “sustainability”, two for “climate change”, and none for “burnout” or “ally”. Given the few relevant abstracts, only the set covering technologies could be clustered around themes.

3.2.1. Activis* OR Advocacy

Seven relevant abstracts were found that covered the poverty of disabled people.

As for “activis*”, one stated that the first legal aid clinics in Ontario were developed by activists because they saw the existing legal system was not meeting the poverty law needs of many people, including people with disabilities [201]. One was highlighting the work of the disabled activist Liz Crow in a time of detrimental welfare changes for disabled people and increased hate crimes against disabled people [202]. One argued: “The most pressing issue that faces disability as a human rights issue is to ensure that people who consider themselves human rights activists understand how and in what way disability is a human rights issue, along with gender, sex, poverty, race, age, and other identity characteristics that are routinely denied privilege” [203] (p. 118). One covered Chapman’s Critique of Critical Psychiatry, and then stated that activism concerning disability poverty is important without expanding on it or how this is linked to critical psychiatry [204]. In one abstract, it was argued that the goal of “economic security for people with a disability held by disability activists and policy-makers has not been realized on a global scale”, “despite the implementation of various poverty alleviation initiatives” [205] (p. 106).

As for abstracts containing the term advocacy, one saw the “Employment provisions of Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)” as a useful advocacy tool to fight poverty experienced by disabled people [206]. One highlighted various barriers (a lack of resources, poverty, and unpaid positions at organizations) to the self-advocacy of disabled people, even to joining disability rights groups. In the same abstract, it was argued that disability organizations maintain these barriers [207].

3.2.2. Intersectionality

As for the eight abstracts that linked intersectionality to disabled people and poverty, one abstract covered the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) received by youths, and stated that these youths are impacted “by the intersectionality of racism, disability, and poverty” [208] (p. 513). In another abstract, it is argued that the “intersectionality of age, gender, poverty, and disability worsened the experience of stigma” [209]. Another looked at the perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs of Cambodian practitioners and the “Intersectionality of disability and poverty” [210] (p. 3). In another abstract, it was argued that the “intersections of poverty, disability, racial inequity, disability, and trauma are inextricably linked in their daily lives" [211]. One abstract covering the environmental conservation efforts of women stated that women have to be addressed more in the literature in general as well as their intersectionality, such as “race, ethnicity, age, religion, poverty and disability” [212] (p. 860). One argued that connecting the roles of scholars and community activists needs a change in teacher education. The abstract focused on “intersectionality-focused anti-racist and anti-ableist teachers and teacher educators” [213] (p. 1). Covering disabled activists, poverty scholars, and community scholars in partnership with educational professionals, the article introduced the “Disability Centered Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (DCCSPs), a conceptual framework and pedagogical application integrating Disability Critical Race Theory and culturally sustaining pedagogies in teacher education” [213] (p. 1). One noted that the “intersections between disability, gender, race and poverty are often overlooked” [214] (p. 24). In one abstract, one editor reflecting on the different sections in the book noted that the book covers the intersectionality of racism, sexism, and disablism, and reflected on an empirical study from South Africa that focused on disabled women and their experienced violence and impairment intersecting with poverty [215].

3.2.3. Sustainability and Climate Change

We found three relevant abstracts for sustainability and two for climate change. As for sustainability, in one abstract, it was stated that “the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to end poverty”, and it was argued in the abstract that “disabled people face high risks of poverty because of barriers such as lack of workplace disability facilities” [216] (p. 1), something the authors argued has to be fixed. In a second abstract, the SDGs are linked to the topic of poverty and disabled people: “Sustainable Development Goals seek to promote a stronger focus on the alleviation of poverty and inequality amongst disabled people” [132] (p. 682). In the same abstract, it was argued that “the vulnerability of disabled people has been highlighted within international climate change agreements”, and that “a critical disability lens is largely lacking from broader aspects of climate change adaptation planning” [132] (p. 682), something the authors think should be rectified. The third abstract, “No One Left Behind? Comparing Poverty and Deprivation between People with and without Disabilities in the Maldives”, highlighted the importance of disaggregating indicators by disability to ensure that development progress includes everyone, as per the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The abstract estimated the prevalence of disability in the Maldives and compared indicators of poverty and living conditions between people with and without disabilities. It indicated that people with disabilities are at risk of being left behind across multiple Sustainable Development Goal domains, including income poverty, food insecurity, health, education, work, social participation, and vulnerability to violence. The abstract also identified specific groups within the disabled population facing higher levels of deprivation, such as those with cognitive and mental health impairments, those living outside the capital city, and children and working-age adults [217].

Two abstracts addressed the intersection of poverty of disabled people and climate change. Bell et al. (2020) noted that “with the Millennium Development Goals failing to recognize disability issues, the Sustainable Development Goals seek to promote a stronger focus on the alleviation of poverty and inequality amongst disabled people”, and Bell argues to “integrate critical insights from disability studies into current understandings of climate change adaptation and mobility” [132]. In the second one, it is stated that “Persons with disabilities (different abilities) are often among the poorest in society and are significantly more vulnerable to climate change, particularly in developing countries” [218] (p. 107).

3.2.4. Technologies

We found 22 relevant abstracts that covered the poverty of disabled people in conjunction with technologies. Within these relevant abstracts, there were two main themes. One theme was that technology can alleviate the poverty of disabled people. This theme was present in six abstracts covering mostly ICT as a technology [219,220,221,222,223,224], but also assistive technologies [219]. Under poverty, it not only focused on economic poverty, but also capability poverty [225], which was linked to the lack of access to assistive technologies, such as wheelchairs. At the same time, some of these abstracts also stated that there were problems with achieving that potential [220,221].

The other theme was lack of access (accessibility poverty). Lack of access due to cost was seen as a reason for poverty (staying in poverty [226,227,228,229] or ending up in poverty [229]), and poverty was seen to decrease the access to technologies, including assistive technologies due to cost [230,231,232,233,234]. “Information poverty” [235] and “information marginalization” [235] were two concepts mentioned once in the abstracts.

In one abstract, it was stated “This article considers the lives of disabled people requiring assistive technology who live in contexts of urban poverty” [236] (p. 1), but did not then proceed to address how the technology impacts poverty. The abstract seemed to suggest that a wheelchair alone cannot fix the problem [236].

• To provide some quotes:

“For most poor and disabled people, however, appropriate technology is not accessible and what technology is available is not amenable to their needs” [227].

“Therefore, what we see is an emergent picture where social barriers can be reinforced by poverty and where poverty reinforces social barriers faced by people with disabilities. We conclude that access to appropriate technology alongside societal interventions tackling incorrect beliefs about disability can help to overcome the stigma faced by people with disabilities” [237] (p. 1).

“Radical change in economic paradigms and societal structures that drive poverty and disability may be required for the effective adoption of assistive technology and closure of capability gaps” [5] (p. 1).

“ICT4D rarely covers disabled people in low resource settings” [238] (p. 1).

3.2.5. Accessibility

As for accessibility, some types were already covered under the technology section. As for the new ones, eight abstracts had relevant content.

One abstract stated that the article looks at the “correlation of poverty, disability, and employment through the linkages with education, accessibility, legislative and policy changes, and awareness” [239] (p. 60). One listed the lack of accessibility to family as one cause of learning disorders [240]. Covering children with autism and their families in Cambodia, one noted that the “pervasive nature of poverty has been a major contributory factor in the slow development of and accessibility to services” [241] (p. 1). In one abstract, a rethinking of universal design was suggested, given the lack of accessibility of disabled people to digital products and services due to poverty [230]. In one abstract, the link between people with disabilities in poverty and disaster preparedness, and various accessibility issues were highlighted [242]. One simply noted that the accessibility of any resource is determined by many factors, such as disability, poverty, and access to technologies [243]. In one abstract, it was argued that “making things physically accessible is useful but that other accessibility issues have to be addressed to be able to partake in the information society, such as poverty, illiteracy, and social isolation” [244] (p. 183). Covering visually impaired people and assistive technologies in India and other developing economies, one made the case that accessibility without affordability is useless [226]. The concept of “capability poverty” was introduced and linked to the lack of access to assistive technologies, such as wheelchairs as one factor [225].

4. Discussion

Our findings suggest many problems with the academic inquiry focusing on the poverty of disabled people in Canada and beyond and independent of whether the term poverty or the terms impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income” were used. We divided the discussion into three main sections following the RQs.

4.1. RQ 1: Coverage of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A1 and Table A2)

The poverty of disabled people was covered in 0.86% of the abstracts containing the term “poverty” in general. If Canada was added, the number was 4.1% (88 abstracts). For the terms “impoverish*” OR “socioeconomic” OR “SES” OR “income”, the numbers related to disabled people were 0.94% for Canada and 3.15% in general (based on the numbers of abstracts in Table 1). The results in Table A1 and Table A2 (Appendix A) show that many disability terms and, with that, certain disabled people were rarely or not at all covered, and that the presence of disability-linked negative -isms (ableism and disablism) was low, as was the engagement with the intersection of disability with other marginalized identities.

Given that disabled people disproportionally live in poverty (more than 80% live in poverty, point 23 in the key SDG document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [2]), and that 27.2% [138] (p. 9) (source used [139]) of disabled people in Canada live in poverty, one should expect that disabled people are a major focus of academic inquiries, and therefore much more covered than what we found.

According to the United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities”, to end poverty and hunger for persons with disabilities, several actions should be considered.

• “Design social protection policies and programmes to include persons with disabilities.
• Remove barriers and obstacles that persons with disabilities face in accessing and fully benefiting from social protection on an equal basis with others.
• Sensitize personnel of grant offices about barriers experienced by persons with disabilities to access social protection and approaches to overcome these barriers.
• Improve access to and accessibility of banking and other financial services, including mobile banking.
• Disaggregate data on poverty and hunger by disability status.
• Establish national monitoring and evaluation systems that periodically assess all social protection programmes regarding inclusion and positive impact on the situation of persons with disabilities” [4] (p. 3).

How can this be achieved if so little data are generated? Are most of the disability and poverty data that could make a difference for disabled people living in poverty generated outside of academia? If yes, who generates them?

Poverty is seen as one factor to negatively impact “adaptive capacity and sensitivity to climate change” [112] (p. 668), and it is noted by the Government of Canada that they encounter challenges in identifying best practices for populations labeled as vulnerable [113], which includes disabled people. Not having data for certain is one factor in the challenges, especially as the best practices and challenges are so different for different disabled people, including disabled people in poverty and disabled people who also belong to another marginalized group.

Nothing about us without us [134,154,245,246,247] reflects the sentiment that disabled people want to be heard on topics that impact them [248,249,250] but think they are often ignored [120,122,251,252,253,254]. Our study suggests that the academic engagement might fit this sentiment. Indeed, for example, many poverty reduction strategies exist, but at the same time, the usefulness of these strategies for disabled people as worded is questioned [153,154]. Our findings add to the argument that approaches are needed that link poverty and disability with empowerment strategies and changes in attitudes [163,176,177,183,184]. Not being there or being ignored is the ultimate form of disempowerment.

4.2. RQ2: Coverage of Disabled People in Conjunction with Various Topics (Appendix A: Table A3, Table A4, Table A5, Table A6, Table A7, Table A8, Table A9, Table A10, Table A11 and Table A12 and Qualitative Content)

4.2.1. Burnout, Activism, Intersectionality, and Poverty of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A3 and Qualitative Content)

We found few abstracts engaging with activism and poverty related to disabled people (Appendix A: Table A3) and content analysis. There are many problems faced by activists [255,256,257,258,259]. Disabled people are activists and want to shape their reality, as the “Nothing about us without us” [134,154,245,246,247], for example, indicates. Disabled people are the experts in their lived realities [260]. However, evidence related to disabled people is often not produced [261,262,263,264,265], and disabled people face many problems as activists, for example, related to environmental issues, such as burnout due to attitudinal and other accessibility issues [11,22,120,122,266]. As such, the area of being an activist needs much more coverage, as the poverty of disabled people increases the barriers to being an activist even more. Who, as a disabled person living in poverty, has the time, the energy, the access to information, to meaningfully engage with activism and contribute to the many topics that negatively impact disabled people and need to be fixed?

As such, disabled people who live in poverty need allies as activists to tackle the issed of poverty, and disabled people need allies from all the discourses we covered to ensure that disabled people can meaningfully contribute, and the discourses do not make the situation of disabled people more problematic. At the same time, being an ally as a disabled person to other disabled people and non-disabled people to disabled people pose many challenges, such as ally burnout, which are not covered in the literature [267]. Given that we found few hits with terms linked to allies (Appendix A: Table A3), suggests that the challenges of being an ally to disabled people in poverty (whether you are a disabled person or non-disabled person as an ally) are not engaged with. Finally, to finish the selective use of examples of terms suggesting gaps in the literature, we only found seven abstracts in our content analysis that linked intersectionality to disabled people and poverty [208,209,210,211,212,213,214]. This is a problem. A short search on Google Scholar for “intersectionality” and “poverty” generated over 144,000 hits. “Poverty” and “intersectionality” in abstracts generated over 196 hits in Scopus, 576 abstracts in the 70 databases from EBSCO Host, and 139 in Web of Science, suggesting that people engage with the topic, just not in conjunction with disabled people.

4.2.2. Well-Being and Poverty of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A4, Table A5, Table A6, Table A7 and Table A8)

The well-being area is another one where one would and should have expected more coverage. Poverty is seen as a problem for well-being. A search performed by us in Google Scholar with “well-being” and poverty generated over 3 million hits, “social well-being, for example, generated over 100,000 hits, and economic well-being over 227,000 hits. However, although well-being is mentioned as a generic term to some extent, specific well-being phrases, such as social well-being or economic well-being, are mostly absent, suggesting that the well-being academic community did not engage much with the topic of poverty of disabled people or what to do about it in a differentiated way. Many specific composite measures of well-being could have been addressed, but were not used to engage with the poverty of disabled people (Appendix A: Table A4). The study findings suggest a lack of engagement by the academic community focusing on well-being, including the ones using the composite well-being to engage with the poverty of disabled people. For example, the United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities” [4] mentioned community-based rehabilitation numerous times, for example, “Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes aim to enhance social inclusion for persons with disabilities and their families while reversing the vicious cycle of poverty and disability” [4] (p. 43). And, if community-based rehabilitation is important, then the community-based rehabilitation matrix [163,196,197] could be used to audit progress.

Of the 111 indicators used in the four composite well-being measures, we selected to look at (“The social determinants of health (SDH) [186,187,188,189,190,191,192], The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIWB) [193,194], the OECD Better Life index [195], and the Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) matrix [163,196,197]) (Appendix A: Table A5, Table A6, Table A7 and Table A8) many received few hits that could have received many more, given their importance in engaging with the topic of the poverty of disabled people. Nearly every single one of the 111 indicators, if fulfilled increases the empowerment of disabled people to live their lives and decreases the danger of poverty. To only discuss the finding of low hits for the phrase “social norms”. Social norms play a pivotal role in dealing with the problem of poverty [268,269,270,271,272]. Social norms are one factor in how poverty is defined [273,274]. It is stated, for example, that “Social exclusion can be linked to relative poverty as exclusion from economic and social norms” [275]. Studies look at the link between social norms and energy poverty [276] and the social norms of accessibility (the abstract suggests it is used as a general term, not accessibility for disabled people) and transport poverty [277], “poverty is seen in terms of complex coping strategies that are managed within a framework of social norms” [278], and “Gender discrimination and associated social norms are important contributing factors to the high frequency of women trapped in poverty” [279]. At the same time, the very issue of social norms is at the core of the field of disability studies that focuses on the lived experience of disabled people [280,281], in particular, the “social norm of being able” [282] (p. 102). Social norms are closely linked to empowerment [283,284,285], and many social norms disempower disabled people. Changing social norms are mentioned as action items in “The United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities” [4].

4.2.3. Sustainability, Climate Change, and Environmental Topics, and the Poverty of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A9 and Qualitative Content)

People living in poverty are affected by environmental issues, and poverty is reported to impact many environment-linked topics [94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109]. According to the World Bank, “More than half the global population—around 4.5 billion people—are at high risk of experiencing extreme weather events, such as floods, drought, cyclones, or heatwaves. About 2.3 billion of them are poor (living on less than $6.85 per day), and almost 400 million are extremely poor (living on less than $2.15 per day), according to 2020 data” [110]. Furthermore, many problems are noted for disabled people in relation to sustainability, climate change, environmental activism and issues, and environmental and disaster planning, preparedness, and management, including the lack of coverage [20,21,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135]. Our content analysis of the abstracts containing sustainability and climate change and disability terms found only three relevant abstracts for sustainability and two for climate change [132,216,217,218]. At the same time, environmental activism generated no hits in our quantitative results and none of the terms linked to emergency and disaster management, planning, or preparedness generated more than 10 hits, with many of them generating no hits (Appendix A: Table A9). Our study suggests a disconnect in relation to the poverty of disabled people and sustainability, climate change, emergency, and disaster preparedness, planning, and management, and environmental activism, which are all areas of importance for the SDGs to succeed, including the SDG of poverty reduction [2]. It is, for example, argued in the article “Poverty alleviation among persons with disabilities via United Nations’ sustainable development goals in Ghana: Voices of stakeholders with disabilities” that the “SDG project engendered little tangible improvement in the lives of persons with disabilities to end poverty and hunger for persons with disabilities” [286] (p. 175). Given that people living in poverty are especially vulnerable to environmental problems and that disabled people are disproportional present among the people living in poverty, our findings suggest that this gap must be filled. The United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities” [4] provides many action items linked to the SDGs and to climate and other environmental issues that need data for best practices. The flagship report‘s foreword by António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, states: “The present report aims to advance our efforts to remove barriers and empower persons with disabilities to make positive changes in their lives and communities” [4], and the report uses the term empowerment often and highlights specific measures for empowerment. For this to happen, to be empowered as change agents, one must have data and be present as producers of such data. Which social changes will be proposed and discussed within sustainability and climate change, and do these changes lead to the empowerment or disempowerment of disabled people? Given the many problems disabled people face in being activists [11,22,120,122,266], the process we are in is still in the stage of disempowerment, and empowerment, as in “the process and outcome of addressing disempowerment, whereas disempowerment refers to the exclusion or absence of power, resources, and decision-making capacity due to marginalization, disenfranchisement, and other structural, institutional, and discursive constraints” [171], is far from being achieved for disabled people. Furthermore, one wonders whether point 26 presented in the main SDG document, “Transforming our World” [2], where it is stated “Point 26: We are committed to the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases, including behavioural, developmental and neurological disorders, which constitute a major challenge for sustainable development”, hints at a cultural problem in the SDG discussion and the academic focus on disabled people.

4.2.4. International Normative Documents (Appendix A: Table A10)

The United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities” [4] mentions throughout the importance of international normative frameworks. We looked at the “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”, “Convention on the Rights of the Child”, “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” and the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination”, to cover various marginalized groups and we looked at the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”, as climate change is one topic we focused on. We found the most hits (63) for the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which makes sense, given that most abstracts covered disabled people (Appendix A: Table A10). However, other international normative documents could also have been used, for example, to engage with the intersectionality of disability with other marginalized entities. The Convention on the Rights of the Child had 14 hits, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had 10 hits, and the others had 0 hits (Appendix A: Table A10). The “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” could have been used in the coverage of poverty, climate change, and disabled people.

4.2.5. Technology, Accessibility, and Its Governance, and the Poverty of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A11 and Qualitative Data)

Point 15 in [2] states: “The spread of information and communications technology and global interconnectedness has great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies”. Our study indicates that the use of technologies to solve the poverty issues of disabled people is not that clear-cut, if looked at through the lens of success. Although we found in our content analysis six abstracts that contained the theme of technology fixing the poverty issues of disabled people (mostly ICT as technology) [219,220,221,222,223,224], other themes present were that there were problems with achieving that potential [220,221]. Lack of access (accessibility poverty) due to cost was seen as a reason for poverty (staying in poverty [226,227,228,229] or ending up in poverty [229]), and poverty decreases the access to technologies, including assistive technologies, due to cost [230,231,232,233,234]. At the same time, our study did not find any hits related to science and technology governance terms or technology-related ethics terms (Appendix A: Table A11), indicating a lack of involvement of communities linked to these terms concerning the issue of technologies and the poverty of disabled people.

4.2.6. Equity Diversity and Inclusion Phrases and Policy Frameworks, and the Poverty of Disabled People (Appendix A: Table A12)

The poverty of disabled people is often caused by not being employed in the first place [142,143,144,145], not having a good-quality job [146,147,148,149], not being paid equally [150], often being paid below minimum wage [151], and a lack of occupational advancements [152]. Many equity-, diversity-, and inclusion-related phrases and EDI policy frameworks are used to flag and improve the negative workplace situation of marginalized people, including disabled people [148], and could be used to discuss the issue of poverty and being occupied. However, it is noted that problems exist in how disabled people are engaged with in EDI discussions [148]. EDI/DEI ought to aim to increase disabled people’s employment rates and improve their workplace realities [148]. That we found little or no presence of EDI/DEI phrases or policy frameworks (Appendix A: Table A12) within the literature focusing on the poverty of disabled people adds to the evidence suggesting that there is a problem with how EDI/DEI-focused academic literature covers disabled people, suggesting a gap that needs to be filled. EDI/DEI strategies for a given occupation are impacted by the lived reality of disabled people outside the given occupation (see discussions around work–life balance, for example [287]), which includes their economic reality.

4.3. Research Question 3: Making Use of Occupation and Ability Judgment-Focused Concepts (Appendix A: Table A13 and Table A14)

4.3.1. Occupation-Focused Concepts (Table A13)

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [3] outlines many problems and barriers disabled people face in being occupied, whether it is paid work or other forms of occupation. Many rights-based occupational concepts are employed to discuss the barriers to being occupied [23]. Occupational rights concepts are also used to describe occupational quality [23]. One could use these terms to interrogate the causes and consequences of poverty for disabled people. We found no hits for occupational-focused concepts (Appendix A: Table A13). Our finding fits another study that argued that rights-based occupational concepts could be used much more in many more academic fields than they are [23]. Target 9 of goal 8 of the SDGs states that, “By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value” [2]. This suggests that the SDG community could use these concepts to engage with the still-existing problems disabled people face in being employed in the first place [142,143,144,145], and the quality of the job [146,147,148,149,150,151,152]. In the end, all these occupational concepts could be used to question the negative effect of poverty on disabled people being occupied and to interrogate the barriers disabled people face to being occupied on all levels, which in turn increases the danger of poverty. This includes emerging new technologies, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and internet of things, and the increasing ability to enhance the human being/mind beyond the norm [288].

4.3.2. Ability Judgment-Focused Concepts (Table A14)

The term “abilit*” had many hits, which is not surprising, given that poverty is negatively affecting many abilities of disabled people and that many abilities are needed to overcome poverty. However, it is problematic that the ability expectation-focused concepts [24,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,41] developed in ability-based studies [27,41,42,43,44,45,46]), disability studies, and the disability rights movement are not employed. All of these terms could be used to critically analyze ability-based expectations, judgments, norms, conflicts [26], and disablism, the systemic discrimination based on not measuring up to irrelevant ability norms [38]. Ability judgments and the disabling use of ability expectations impact not only disabled people, but humans in general, and also animals and nature [41]. Different social groups have different ability expectations [21] in general. Humans also have different sentiments about the ability expectations humans should have and can have of nature [162]. All these ability judgments influence the abilities of disabled people and others to overcome poverty or increase the danger that they end up in poverty.

Given the difference in ability expectations and the power dynamic of whose ability expectations count, ability expectation-based conflicts are everywhere. They are, for example, evident at every United Nations Climate Change Conference and in meeting the SDGs, where the outcome impacts people in poverty. These conflicts are one example of the need for ability expectation and ableism governance.

Ability privileges (having one ability opening the doors to experience other abilities [26]) are often linked to who sets the ability norms. Then, being able to set the norms is by itself an ability privilege that comes with being in a powerful position, which by itself might again be because one did fit certain ability norms. It is argued that “The concept of ableism was developed by the disabled people’s rights movement to question species-typical, normative, irrelevant and/or arbitrary body ability expectations and the ability privileges (i.e., the ability to work, to gain education, to be part of society, to have an identity, to be seen as a citizen) that come with an ability normative species-typical body (although they did not use the term ability privilege) and the disablism the discriminatory, oppressive, or abusive behaviour against the sub-species-typical people” [26] (p. 120). As such, who sets the ability norms that directly impact disabled people? The reality of disabled people disproportionally living below the poverty line suggests that existing ability norms do not benefit disabled people.

To be able to benefit from nature in certain ways is one form of ability privilege and is often based on other abilities, such as having money for green consumerism (ability privilege of consumption) [26] (see also the term eco-ability privilege, engaging with the difference between eco and biocentrism [26]). Environmental privilege is another term used to cover similar dynamics [289,290,291,292,293,294], with Bratspies linking environmental privilege to concepts of overburdened and underburdened communities, such as pollution [295].

People are often not aware of their ability privileges, a reality one could link to the fact that they internalized ableism [25] and internalized disablism [28,29,30,31].

Adaptation is a main word in the Transforming our World SDG document [2]. However, the very concept of adaptation and its implementation is contested.

The late Desmond Tutu [114] questioned why the ones not causing the problem are demanded to adapt, whether they can or not. What the late Desmond Tutu questioned could be seen to highlight one example of ability inequity, “a normative term denoting an unjust or unfair distribution of access to and protection from abilities generated through human interventions”, and ability inequality, “a descriptive term denoting an uneven access to and protection from abilities generated through human interventions” [20] (p. 16). Another two phrases that highlight the dynamic Desmond Tutu questioned are adaptation disablism and accommodation apartheid [117].

The question is, what does adaptation mean for disabled people living in poverty? Which abilities can disabled people living in poverty employ to adapt? What abilities are expected from them to adapt to? Do they have the ability to adapt? If not, how can disabled people be empowered to adapt? Or, following Desmond Tutus framing, how are disabled people empowered or can be empowered to question the adaptations required from them? These are questions one needs data and analysis on through an ability studies and disability studies lens. Ability obsolescence (that ones set of abilities is seen as obsolete) [27,37] impacts disabled people and others in many ways. Having cherished abilities is one factor for staying out of poverty. One main area where ability obsolescence plays itself out is to have an income. The very discussions around cyborgs, automatization, artificial intelligence, and robotics, for example, are about old abilities needed for a given occupation becoming obsolete, new abilities needed to obtain an income, and new abilities generating new ways of gaining income. The increasing ability to enhance human body and mind abilities beyond the norms are also driven in part by wanting new abilities, which could make old abilities obsolete [27,37,296], impacting the ability of the non-enhanced in being occupied, including being occupied with paid work [288], which in turn could expose them to the danger of living in poverty or not making it out of poverty. However, terms linked to human enhancement in Table A14 (Appendix A) did not generate any hits as did not the techno-related ability judgment terms in Table A14, such as techno-ableism [34,35] (Appendix A). The question is, whose abilities will be seen as obsolete and who can use the need for new ability expectations to increase their situation in life? Given that disabled people are already often judged as ability deficient and, as such, precluded from generating income for themselves, how will they obtain new abilities, or can they even obtain the new abilities to make them able to generate income? Given the many problems to achieve goal 4 target 4.5 of [2], “By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations” [2], for disabled people, what education, teaching what abilities, do they have access to?

5. Conclusions, Implications, and Further Research Opportunities

Our study revealed that the poverty of disabled people is under-researched in the Canadian context and in general (RQ1) and in conjunction with many topics, such as sustainability, climate change, emergency and disaster planning, preparedness and management, environmental issues, well-being, and concepts linked to a good life, intersectionality, activism, equity, diversity and inclusion, science and technology governance and technology-focused ethics fields (RQ2), and that occupation and ability judgment-focused concepts are rarely used to discuss poverty and disabled people (RQ3). Given that 80% of disabled people live in poverty globally [2] and 27.2% in Canada [138] (p. 9) (source used [139], our findings are problematic and have many implications. One implication is that the poverty discourse in general and the SDG 1 discourse miss essential data to effectively decrease the poverty of disabled people. The data also suggest a disempowerment of disabled people in academic discourse and a lack of production of good practices that could empower disabled people experiencing poverty.

As for the academic implications and future research, our findings suggest that there is a need for many academic studies on the poverty of disabled people in Canada and globally, and that the intersectionality of disability with other marginalized identities must be considered further. Our findings suggest many opportunities for academic collaborations between different groups of scholars, such as disability studies scholars, science and technology studies scholars, sustainability scholars, activism scholars, scholars focusing on occupation, intersectionality scholars, and anti-poverty scholars on the topic of poverty of disabled people, more like this for example [297]. The results of our study suggest that there is a need for change in the research ecosystem. The equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts must cover not only who does the research (so involving more disabled people), but also efforts “to EDI” research questions toward the social realities of disabled people making it more rewarding to cover the social aspects of disabled people, something EDI discourse neglects [148]. The EDI lens should be employed further to investigate the impact of the poverty of disabled people on showing up in post-secondary education, the performance of disabled people in education in general, and the barriers to and solutions for being occupied. EDI can also be used more to investigate the impacts of educational and employment discrimination against disabled people on the danger of disabled people ending up in poverty. The issue of burnout (disabled activist burnout and life burnout of disabled people) [11,22,266,298] needs much more coverage. It is crucial to provide platforms for disabled individuals to advocate for issues pertaining to disability and poverty. Their active involvement in shaping discourses on these topics will help mitigate the potential harm caused by misguided narratives, such as those contributing to the disproportionate number of disabled individuals living below the poverty line. By amplifying their voices, we can foster more informed, inclusive, and equitable policies and practices that address the unique challenges faced by disabled people experiencing poverty. To just say that one should involve the disability community is, however, not enough, because, given their precarious life situation, to ask them to be involved in research might be a burden if the problematic lived reality and the danger of life burnout are not rectified [11]. As such, empowering disabled people to speak up for themselves has to include fixing the issues mentioned in the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities [3] and documents, such as the United Nations Flagship report “Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with persons with disabilities” [4]. The very issue of allyship also needs more coverage, given the many challenges an ally of disabled people (may it be a disabled ally of others or non-disabled ally of disabled allies) faces [267]. All the discourses we covered could make use of the occupational rights-based concepts and the ability expectation-based concepts to engage with the poverty of disabled people. It might be useful to ascertain whether the gaps we found in the coverage of disabled people are specific to the disability coverage, or whether various keywords we found no hits with are, in general, not present in abstract engaging with the topic of poverty.

Our findings also have implications for education. Data must be generated so that they can be used in appropriate courses to increase students’ literacy on the poverty of disabled people and show potential links between the poverty of disabled people and the topic we covered, and entice students to become researchers, educators, and policy analysts on the topic. A collaboration between the different fields we mentioned could also be used to influence educational content [297]. Many ability judgment-based exercises could be performed to increase the sensitivity of students to the impact of cultural dynamics reflected by the ability judgment-based concepts on the poverty of disabled people.

As for the implications for policy making, our findings indicate that current policy actions may lack the critical data necessary to effectively address and reduce poverty among disabled individuals, as well as to anticipate the impacts of societal developments, like scientific and technological advancements, or climate change on this population. It is stated that, “Finally, exploring the relationship between poverty and disability must not be confined to an academic project, but one of praxis, motivated by the need to question, challenge and shift disablism, including that resulting from poverty and its structural, historical and discursive causes. The final goal should be one where reciprocal responsibility and social justice are the key objectives and targets” [299] (p. 233).

For example, the topic of ability obsolescence due to scientific and technological advancements (artificial intelligence, robotics, internet of things, and automatization) impacts the employability of disabled people disproportionally due to the job profiles of the majority of disabled people [300,301] (Table 3: Employed persons by disability status, occupation, and sex, 2023, annual averages; Table 4: Employed persons by disability status, industry, class of worker, and sex, 2023 annual averages and Table 2: Employed full- and part- time workers by disability status and age, 2023 annual averages), for which many could be classified as low-hanging fruits for being replaced by machines. One policy strategy discussed to alleviate poverty and to improve overall well-being that becomes increasingly visible is the implementation of a universal basic income [302,303,304,305,306,307,308]. At the same time, it is also noted that a general universal basic income might not fit disabled people and their needs, and might make them more vulnerable to poverty due to the many extra daily costs they face [309]. Further research into innovative policy interventions could provide valuable insights and inform more targeted approaches to support disabled individuals in overcoming poverty.