Disabled adults are now more likely to live in poor households than either pensioners or children, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Three out of every ten disabled adults of working age in Britain are affected and are living in poverty according to a report for the foundation by the think tank, the New Policy Institute.

At the same time, it found that many disabled people struggled to get work, while others were forced to work for low wages.

The researchers found that around 800,000 disabled people aged between 25 and retirement age were classed as being economically inactive but wanting to work, compared with just 200,000 who were officially counted as being unemployed.

For any given level of educational qualification, a disabled person is around three times as likely to lack but want work as non-disabled people. The rate among disabled graduates (14 per cent) is higher than that for non-disabled adults with no qualifications at all.

Peter Kenway, co-author of the report, said, "A disabled person is more likely to be either low paid or out of work than a non-disabled person with similar qualifications. The inescapable conclusion is that the labour market discriminates against disabled people."

Guy Palmer, another co-author of the report, said: "Both child poverty and pensioner poverty are decreasing because the government brought in policies to address them."

"But poverty among disabled people is high and rising, with little by way of government policy, thus far, to help. Tackling disabled poverty needs to be made a top priority."

The report also found that the number of people living in poverty across the whole population had continued to fall and was currently around 12 million - the lowest level since 1987.

The proportion of pensioners in poor households had fallen from 27% to 22% since the mid-1990s, while the number of children living in poverty had dropped from 32% to 29%. But the proportion of working age adults without children who live in poverty has remained the same at 17%.