Severe developmental disability and the transition to adulthood.

Background: Developmental disabilities are serious and long-lasting. There are few studies of developmental disability in the transition to adulthood, when the programs that provided support in childhood may no longer be available.

Objective: We studied associations of long-lasting developmental disabilities with health, behaviors, and well-being in adulthood.

Methods: We used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2017), its Child Development Supplement (CDS, 1997, 2002, 2007), and its Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS, every-other year, 2005-2017) (n = 2702) following a national sample from childhood through age 28, defining serious developmental disabilities using diagnoses and reports from parents, teachers, schools, children, and young adults. We tested differences in proportions using Chi-square tests, estimated differences in least squares means, and used logistic regression to compare results for those with and without developmental disabilities. We adjusted results for age, sex, race, immigrant status, family income, region, metropolitan statistical area, educational attainment, and employment status, accounting for sampling weights and survey design.

Results: At ages 18-21, 8.2% had serious developmental disability (95% confidence interval, CI 6.6-9.8). They were more likely to report: no high school graduation (19.3% vs. 4.3%), being assaulted physically (32.1% vs. 20.4%) or sexually (14.4% vs. 6.6%), serious criminal arrests (25.7% vs. 13.2%), smoking (30.8% vs. 12.8%), sedentariness (5.8% vs. 1.1%), obesity (39.2% vs. 23.4%), diabetes (9.1% vs. 2.1%), and work disability (18.7% vs. 4.3%) (all p < 0.01) compared to peers without developmental disability.

Conclusions: Results indicate opportunities to promote education, self-direction, safety, and well-being for people transitioning to adulthood with serious developmental disabilities.