ABSTRACT
The OECD Report Transforming Disability into Ability took its current form because its authors were confronted with a fundamental paradox in policies in many member countries:
Disability support is awarded on the basis of demonstrated inability to work.
Disabled people want to be enabled to participate in society, which includes in particular access to work.
This implies that income support is granted provided disabled people demonstrate they cannot work. That is, they are given support for demonstrating they cannot work, not for finding out how they can. The Report documents at length the result of these policies: very small rates of outflow from disability benefit, despite wide-ranging programmes to encourage it.