A preliminary study done by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania finds that there is an economic hardship faced by families that have a child who has an autism spectrum disorder. This may not come as a surprise. It turns out, however, that the reasons why this is so may not be what you would suspect.
The study is considered preliminary because it was recently presented in a medical meeting. The findings have not yet gone through a peer review, and have yet to be published in a medical journal. This does not necessarily mean that the study is flawed, just that it has yet to be reviewed in a scientific way. It is worth being aware of.
This study used data that came from a survey done by the United States government’s Medical Expenditures Panel. From this, researchers gleaned information about families that included children with autism spectrum disorders, about families who had children with other types of chronic conditions, and families that had healthy children. The chronic conditions could have been asthma, ADHD, or cerebral palsy.
One of the reasons why families who have an autistic child face financial burdens is due to the high cost of health care. There are some states that have passed laws requiring insurance companies to cover the costs of treatment for autism in a typical health insurance policy.
But, this is a fairly recent change. In at least some cases, families of children with autism are paying out of pocket for behavioral therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, and other treatments for autism. It is easy to see how that can quickly become expensive, and drain a family’s finances.
The bigger issue is that the support systems that exist to help autistic children are fragmented. Frequently, the child’s mother ends up acting as the child’s case manager. The mother ends up spending a lot of time working with the staff and teachers at the child’s school, in order to make sure her child is getting the help that he or she needs. The mother may also be fighting with health care providers, and insurance companies, to make sure that the right treatments are prescribed, and covered.
Obviously, this is going to take a lot of time. Researchers figured that was the reason why many mothers of autistic children ended up finding employment that was flexible, but also was lower-paying, or to not be employed at all. They needed to be able to allocate hours towards helping their child.
Clearly, an underemployed, or unemployed, parent cannot contribute very much to the finances of the family. According to the study, moms of kids who have an autism spectrum disorder earned around $6,300 less than moms who had children with other health conditions. They also earned about $11,540 less than moms of kids who were healthy. In families that had an autistic child, the moms who were employed were working around 34 or 35 hours a week. The fathers in the families were working 44 to 46 hours per week.
Image by Daniel Borman on Flickr