The Influence of Family Socioeconomic Status on the Post-High School Outcomes of Youth With Disabilities

Using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2, this study considers (a) the extent to which the socioeconomic status (SES) of youth with disabilities predicted their likelihood of high school graduation, postsecondary education enrollment, and employment; (b) the extent to which other individual and family factors mediated the SES-outcome relationships; and (c) other factors that significantly explained outcome variations for youth with disabilities. Results show that SES had a statistically significant but relatively small effect on outcomes, to a sizable extent the effect of SES was mediated by other factors, and many of the covariates in the analyses (e. g., disability type and severity, gender, race/ ethnicity) had their own significant relationships with outcomes that contribute to our understanding of variations in them.