There is a critical threshold of literature documenting that lack of disability inclusive policies adversely affect the well-being of individuals with disabilities.1, 2, 3 For example, using data from approximately 900,000 children in 30 countries, Kuper et al. (2014) find that children with disabilities are less likely to attend formal education and, among those attending school, children with a disability are at a lower level of schooling for their age.4

An emerging body of work suggests that the effects of an individual’s disability may percolate across multiple generations. For example, Mont and Nguyen (2013) find that, in Vietnam, having a disabled parent reduces a child’s probability of attending schools by 16% and lowers the expected number of grades completed.5 The negative impact on school outcomes is larger for boys and more pronounced when the mother is the parent with the disability. Similarly, Ajufu and Moodley (2020) find that, in Tanzania, parental disability is associated with children being less likely to enroll in school and pass examinations.6 They further argue that children’s educational outcomes suffer because of higher medical expenditures on parents, lower educational expenditures, and higher hours spent on household chores.

Apart from these notable exceptions, empirical evidence on intergenerational effects of disability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 80% of the estimated 190 million individuals with significant disabilities live, is limited.7 The primary objective of this study is to assess the relationship between parental disability and children’s outcomes in Nepal, a low-income country. Consistent with the limited number of previous studies on this topic, we ask two key questions. First, what is the association between parental disability and their children’s outcomes? Second, how do the associations vary by the child’s sex?

To our knowledge, these research questions have not been answered in Nepal’s context. More generally, we make two main contributions to the existing literature. First, we assess the association between parental disability and a wide range of educational, labor market, and marital outcomes to provide a comprehensive picture on the multidimensional aspects and intergenerational effects of disability in a low-income context. This differs from previous studies in which researchers have examined a narrower set of outcomes, primarily educational. Second, our large, nationally-representative sample helps allay concerns about statistical power and, to some extent, external validity of our findings.