The third wave supplement to the 1984 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) conducted during the May-August 1984 period, contained a set of questions on disability status. A major purpose of the questions was to allow researchers and policy makers to learn more about the relationship between disability and program participation, but the data also have a more general interest in that they show the extent of disablement among the noninstitutional population and show how the characterisitcs of the disabiled differ from those of the nondisabled.