Autism. Small word with a lot of meanings, definitions and impact. April has been designated as Autism Awareness Month, and you may see posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media; you may hear more stories and read more news articles. What you may or may not see is data, and this is what I’m going to try to present. Note: This is by no means totally scientific data, other than the science of Google. I used the Centers for Disease Control website, the U.S. Census figures from 2014 and various Autism related sites (Including Autism Speaks). I also used state websites for some information. I attempted to make sure I stayed around the year 2014 with the data as that is the most complete I can find. I’m sure there are others who can (and maybe will) be able to provide more accurate data. This is simply my “off the side of my desk” research, so take it for what it is. According to the above criteria:
• About 1 in 68 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.
• Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals (adults and children) with ASD with an average prevalence of about 1 percent.
• The number of individuals (adults and children) on the autism spectrum is estimated at more than 3.5 million in the United States.
• The costs for adults with autism were $174 billion (2014) in the United States.
• Autism services (adults and children) cost U.S. citizens $236-262 billion annually (Buescher et al. 2014).
• A majority of costs in the U.S. are in adult services - $175-196 billion, compared to $61-66 billion for children.
• The U.S. cost of autism over the lifespan of one person is about $2.4 million for a person with an intellectual disability, vs. $1.4 million for a person without an intellectual disability.
• It costs more than $8,600 extra per year to educate a student with autism. (The average cost of educating a student is about $12,000)
When I saw some of the above numbers it was overwhelming, but also a little distant. In my job I try to talk in “David Language”, putting some comparisons to data to help me understand better. So hear it goes.
• 2014 Census for the United States was 318,217,159
• 1 percent of that population (based on the estimates from above, is 3,182,172 U.S. citizens living with ASD.
• Iowa, Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming all have populations less than 3,182,172. That is 21 states that have a smaller overall population than U.S. Citizens living with ASD.
• Brooklyn and Manhattan combined has an estimated population of 3,074.427.
• Miami-Dade County, Fla. has a population of 2,644,650.
• Franklin and Hamilton Counties in Ohio have a combined population of 3,297,852
• Dallas County in Texas has a population of 2,518,638
I also looked at some state numbers:
• 1 percent of the population of Tennessee, where I live, is 65,494. That is about the size of Johnson City.
• 1 percent of the population of Connecticut is 35,967, the approximate size of Norwich or Torrington
• 1 percent of the population of Arizona is about 67,315, a little more than the population of Flagstaff.
• The median household income of the 50 states ranges from $36,919 in Mississippi to $70,004 in Maryland.
I only counted the numbers listed by the data on the websites I visited. I didn’t include in the numbers that in 2014 the average household size was 2.54 persons, which means that those directly impacted by someone with ASD in their home is 8,082,716 (slightly less than the population of Virginia at 8,326,289, the 12th most populous state).
My wife asked me why I did this, and I had to think a moment. One reason is that I deal with data for a living; I try to look at that data and see patterns that help my company improve. And, to be honest, I was curious. What did it teach me, if anything? My family has lived with Autism and its effects for 19 years, going through life with my wonderful son. Autism is a very personal story to me, just as it is for anyone living on the spectrum or living life with someone who has ASD. But it’s also a corporate story, involving multiple friends, family members, acquaintances, medical personnel, educators and everyone else who touches someone with ASD. I guess I just wanted to see the numbers. In this way 1 percent turns out to be a really big number.
David Smith