Abstract

Disability risks among midlife Latino adults in the United States are strongly patterned along axes of stratification such as nativity and citizenship status. Another increasingly salient axis of inequality in disability risk is geographic context, such as U.S. state political environments. While prior research highlights the importance of specific state policies, such as Medicaid, in shaping health-related outcomes, few studies have examined how broader policy contexts and ideologies, such as policy liberalism, influence disability risk, particularly among Latino adults.

This study combines data from the 2008–2019 American Community Survey (ACS) with state-level measures of overall, economic, and social policy liberalism to examine how these dimensions of policy context influence disability risks among a diverse sample of midlife working-age Latino adults (= 1,103,993). Using logistic regression models, we evaluate the associations between state policy liberalism (overall, economic, and social domains) and disability and assess differences by nativity and citizenship status.

Results indicate that greater overall and economic policy liberalism were associated with lower probabilities of disability among midlife Latino adults. The magnitude of this association varied by nativity and citizenship, with U.S.-born Latino adults experiencing greater declines in disability across more liberal policy contexts compared to foreign-born Latino adults. Additionally, compared to the naturalized and non-citizens, citizens experienced greater declines in disability across more liberal policy contexts.

These results suggest that state policy contexts that promote and protect social and economic supports, such as improving access to labor protections, can reduce the burden of disability, particularly among U.S.-born and citizen Latino adults.