State Disability Rate Modest, Study Finds : Health: Experts are divided, however, on whether the findings reflect well or poorly on California’s workers’ comp system.

Despite California’s shoddy image as a bastion of workers’ compensation waste and abuse, a new study says the state’s workers are less likely than most other Americans to be disabled.

The federally funded study, based on 1990 census data, found that Californians had the 16th-lowest rate of disability among workers from the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Experts were divided, however, on whether the study reflects well or poorly on California’s much-criticized workers’ compensation system.

Some speculated that the state’s low disability rate demonstrates that California is doing a relatively good job of rehabilitating injured employees and returning them to work. But others suggested that the new study is further evidence that California spends more on workers’ compensation than its number of workplace injuries warrants.

In California, 7.42% of all people ages 16 to 64 told the U.S. Census Bureau that they were unable to work or limited in what they could do on the job because of disabilities. Nationally, the average was 8.15%--meaning that for every 1,000 Americans, 81.5 are totally or partly disabled.

Among states, the percentages ranged from a low of 6.18% in New Jersey to a high of 12.62% in West Virginia.

Workers’ compensation experts say the low California disability figures were only somewhat surprising. The main problems with the state system, they said, have been bloated medical and legal expenses rather than unusually high injury rates.

“California’s injury rate overall isn’t so out of whack with the rest of the country, but your costs definitely are,” said Peter S. Barth, co-author of a 1992 study on California’s workers’ compensation system and an economics professor at the University of Connecticut.

The new study went beyond counting the people who filed workers’ compensation claims for disabling on-the-job injuries; it also included workers disabled by accidents and illnesses that weren’t caused by their jobs.

The study was conducted by Mitchell P. LaPlante, associate adjunct professor of sociology at UC San Francisco, and was funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. LaPlante and other experts attributed California’s low disability rate partly to the diversity of the state’s economy, including many service industries with few serious job hazards.

LaPlante also cited California workers’ comparatively high education levels. Highly educated workers, he said, are more adaptable and better able to switch into new fields when injuries hinder their ability to handle their old jobs.

Experts said California’s investment in vocational rehabilitation, wheelchair access and other programs aiding the disabled probably plays a role too.

“In general, people with disabilities don’t have their needs well satisfied in ways that enable them to remain productive citizens,” he said. But California, LaPlante said, appears to be spending more than most states in aiding the disabled.

Although California’s workers’ compensation system is often accused of spending money on ineffective programs, it “has put a lot of resources into rehabilitation,” added John F. Burton Jr., a workers’ compensation expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “I would guess that it is paying off in getting people back to work.”

LaPlante acknowledged that illegal immigrants in California who have worked in industries with high disability rates may be undercounted in the census data. But, he said, their numbers probably are not great enough to skew his findings for the state.

In a separate study released this week concerning workplace safety, the California Department of Industrial Relations said the state’s rate of fatal work injuries was four deaths per 100,000 workers, versus a nationwide rate of five. Overall, the number of California workers who suffered fatal work-related injuries fell from 637 in 1991 to 551 in 1992.