Methods of evaluation

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We identified the main indicators in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the three focus areas of the Nordic Programme for Co-operation on Disability Issues 2023–2027 and the findings of the NVC mapping study. The Nordic Statistics Database follows the European Statistics Code of Practice, which guides the evaluation of indicators recommended for inclusion in the database.

European Statistics Code of Practice

The European Statistics Code of Practice serves as the foundation of the shared quality framework within the European Statistical System. It is a self-regulatory framework built around 16 principles covering the institutional environment, statistical processes and statistical outputs. Statistical authorities, including the European Union Statistical Authority (Eurostat), national statistical institutes and other national bodies responsible for developing, producing, and disseminating European statistics are committed to following the Code of Practice (European Commission. Statistical Office of the European Union., 2018).

We used four of the 16 principles to guide the evaluation of the data sources and the existing Eurostat statistics:

10. Cost effectiveness: statistical authorities should ensure that resources are used efficiently.

11. Relevance: the selected statistics should be based on user needs.

14. Coherence and comparability: the statistics should be consistent and comparable to a reasonable extent, both between countries and over time.

13. Timeliness and punctuality: the statistics should be released in a timely and punctual manner. There should be strong justification for including statistics in the Nordic Statistics Database that are expected to be released less frequently than annually.

Relevance is based on recommendations drawn from earlier studies and policy frameworks, especially the 2021 mapping study by the Nordic Welfare Centre on disability statistics, while cost effectiveness is ensured by restricting the selection to open data in the Eurostat database. Accordingly, the focus of this study is an analysis of the comparability and timeliness of the disability statistics available in the Eurostat database for the Nordic countries.

Measuring disability

While the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) does not contain a formal definition of disability, Article 1 (Purpose) states that persons with disabilities are those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others (United Nations, 2006 Article 1).

Eurostat applies the Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) to measure disability in its social surveys. GALI is a two-question instrument measuring the presence of long-standing limitation in activities people usually do. According to this measure, a person is considered to have a disability if they report being "severely limited" or "limited but not severely" in activities people usually do because of a health problem for at least the past 6 months (Eurostat, n.d.). Since our analysis is based on data from Eurostat, we also use activity limitation as a proxy for disability.

The GALI disability indicator is now included in all EU social surveys. Alongside the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), this also includes the Labour Force Survey, the Adult Education Survey, the Household Budget Survey, the Time Use Survey and the Information and Communication Technology Survey (Eurostat, 2021). Table 1 lists the Eurostat surveys that include a disability indicator, including the periodicity of data collection and the year of adoption of the disability indicator.

Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI): An official public health metric used by the European Union and the World Health Organization to measure longstanding disability.

Data source	Indicator	Year of adoption at Eurostat	Periodicity of data collection
EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2005	Annually
	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Children	2021	Every 3 years
	Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS)	2022	Every 3 years
European Health Interview Survey (EHIS)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI)	2006	Every 5 years (latest 2019)
European Health Interview Survey (EHIS)	Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS)	2014	Every 5 years (latest 2019)
EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2022	Every 2 years
Information and Communication Technology Survey	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2024	Annually

Table 1: Overview of Eurostat surveys containing a disability indicator.

Data source	Indicator	Year of adoption at Eurostat	Periodicity of data collection
EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2005	Annually
	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Children	2021	Every 3 years
	Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS)	2022	Every 3 years
European health interview survey (EHIS)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI)	2006	Every 5 years (latest 2019)
European health interview survey (EHIS)	Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS)	2014	Every 5 years (latest 2019)
EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS)	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2022	Every 2 years
Information and Communication Technology Survey	Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) – Adults	2024	Annually

Table 1: Overview of Eurostat surveys containing a disability indicator.

Eurostat maintains a database of published statistics that includes a dedicated section on Disability Statistics covering ten themes. We reviewed all the indicators within these themes, using the principles applied in our evaluation of data sources. Table 2 presents the themes included in Eurostat´s disability statistics section and the number of recommended indicators within each theme. The numbers in brackets stand for indicators presented in this report but not recommended for publication in the Nordic Statistics Database.

Eurostat: Disability Database	Number of recommended indicators
Disability prevalence	6
Access to education and training	4
Access to the labour market	4
Income and living conditions	1
Health status and determinants	1
Access to information and communication technologies	1
Leisure and social participation	0 (7)
Social protection	0
Access to health and care services	0
Disability – historical data	0
Eurostat: Other databases
Discrimination	0 (4)
Total	17 (28)

Table 2: Overview of themes in Eurostat´s section on disability.

Eurostat: Disability Database	Number of recommended indicators
Disability prevalence	6
Access to education and training	4
Access to the labour market	4
Income and living conditions	1
Health status and determinants	1
Access to information and communication technologies	1
Leisure and social participation	0 (7)
Social protection	0
Access to health and care services	0
Disability – historical data	0
Eurostat: Other databases
Discrimination	0 (4)
Total	17 (28)

Table 2: Overview of themes in Eurostat´s section on disability.

Delimitations

This report is subject to several delimitations that should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, the data sources used in the analysis primarily cover people living in private households. This means that persons living in institutional settings or other collective households are generally not included, which limits the representativeness of the results for the full population of persons with disabilities.

Second, several of the indicators are based on relatively small sample sizes, particularly when data are disaggregated by disability status, country and other background characteristics. This may affect the statistical robustness of some comparisons and should be taken into account when interpreting differences between countries and groups.

Third, the disability measure applied in the analysed Eurostat data is based on activity limitation during at least the past six months. This means that the statistics capture current or recent limitation, but not necessarily the timing of disability onset in relation to life course events. For example, for indicators on educational attainment, it is not possible to determine whether an individual had a disability at the time the education was completed.

Fourth, the Eurostat database only includes data from five of the eight Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Statistical indicators for the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland are therefore not included in this report.

In addition, the EU average shown in the figures includes the following Nordic EU Member States: Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Norway and Iceland are not EU members. This should be borne in mind when comparing Nordic countries with the EU average, as they are not fully independent reference groups.

Fifth, while GALI is a useful and widely applied proxy for identifying persons with activity limitation in European social statistics, it has important limitations from a UNCRPD perspective. GALI does not provide information on the nature of disabilities and primarily captures self-reported long-standing limitation in usual activities due to health problems; accordingly, it does not directly measure factors such as environmental barriers, discrimination or accessibility.

Finally, a number of data availability issues affect country comparability. In Iceland, Statistics Iceland is responsible for providing EU-SILC data to Eurostat. Its Social Statistics unit is currently working on the next delivery, expected in 2026, with recent prioritisation of EU-SILC within the unit expected to shorten the interval between future deliveries. For the Labour Force Survey, Statistics Iceland is also investigating why the 2024 Icelandic data have not yet been published in the Eurostat database. The Faroe Islands conducted EU-SILC for the first time in 2026, and the results will be available later this year.

Please note that there are breaks in the time series that can hinder full comparability over time and even between countries. The reader is advised to consult the full data documentation at Eurostat’s website. For the purposes of this report, we highlight that comparisons between different groups for the same country and time are the safest to use, as this guarantees that the same survey definitions have been used. For instance, the study of disability rates by sex and income level for the different Nordic countries indicate that disability is more prevalent among women and those with lower income.