486
Opinion of the Court
abled provided by the study and adopted in the 1988 report, however, includes only noninstitutionalized persons with physical disabilities who are over age 15. The 5.7 million gap between the 43 million figure in the ADA's findings and the 37.3 million figure in the report can thus probably be explained as an effort to include in the findings those who were excluded from the National Council figure. See, e. g., National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Data on Disability from the National Health Interview Survey 1983-1985, pp. 61-62 (1988) (finding approximately 943,000 noninstitutionalized persons with an activity limitation due to mental illness; 947,000 noninstitutionalized persons with an activity limitation due to mental retardation; 1,900,000 noninstitutionalized persons under 18 with an activity limitation); U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 106 (1989) (Table 168) (finding 1,553,000 resident patients in nursing and related care facilities (excluding hospital-based nursing homes) in 1986).
Regardless of its exact source, however, the 43 million figure reflects an understanding that those whose impairments are largely corrected by medication or other devices are not "disabled" within the meaning of the ADA. The estimate is consistent with the numbers produced by studies performed during this same time period that took a similar functional approach to determining disability. For instance, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., drawing on data from the National Center for Health Statistics, issued an estimate of approximately 31.4 million civilian noninstitutionalized persons with "chronic activity limitation status" in 1979. Digest of Data on Persons with Disabilities 25 (1984). The 1989 Statistical Abstract offered the same estimate based on the same data, as well as an estimate of 32.7 million non-institutionalized persons with "activity limitation" in 1985. Statistical Abstract, supra, at 115 (Table 184). In both cases, individuals with "activity limitations" were those who,
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