This article uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) data to show that changes in family policy implemented in the 1990s led to a substantial increase in the number of young women reporting work limitations. These changes also affected measures of socioeconomic outcomes for young women reporting limitations. Hence, the demographic changes mask the effects of changes in family policy and changes in other environmental factors on those outcomes. The findings emphasize the importance disability has in family policy issues and suggest that past underreporting of disability by young mothers might well have disguised its importance. The findings also suggest that the impact of family policy on mothers with disabilities has been quite different than the impact on other mothers. An important effect of family policy changes may have been to financially segregate mothers with low income who have disabilities from other mothers with low income, continuing to relegate them, and possibly their children, to lives of poverty and dependency.
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