"Who's Able-Bodied, Anyway?"

The term “able-bodied” is in such frequent use these days that’s become easy to take at face value. It has come to feel “technical, not ideological; objective, not judgmental.”

But in “Who’s Able-Bodied Anyway?”, Emily Badger and Margot Sanger-Katz examine the politically charged history behind the term. Dating back 400 years, “able-bodied” has been used by American and British lawmakers to “separate poor people who were physically incapable of supporting themselves from the poor who ought to be able to.” As the article points out: “the physical distinction always implies a moral one.”

“Within that term is this entire history of debates about the poor who can work but refuse to, because they’re lazy,” said Susannah Ottaway, a historian of social welfare at Carleton College in Minnesota. “To a historian, to see this term is to understand its very close association with debates that center around the need to morally reform the poor.”

“Able-bodied” is consistently used in policy circles and the think tank world; our government continues to draw lines and write policies using this oblique language. 

The words we use matter - they carry with them the connotations of their history. Identifying what a nebulous term like “able-bodied” really means, and for what purposes it is used, helps us to understand the subtext written into our government programs, laws, and policies.