[2] Research published in 2019 used data from more than 8,000 children in the University of London's Millennium Cohort Study, which tracks the lives of about 19,000 people born in the United Kingdom starting in 2000.
"[4] The meta-analysis continues, "These patterns are remarkably robust, occur within seconds, do not change with increased exposure, and persist across both child and adult age groups.
"[4] This may be why autistic people have "smaller social networks and fewer friendships, difficulty securing and retaining employment, high rates of loneliness, and an overall reduced quality of life.
[7] Autistic people are also less likely to graduate from secondary school, college, or other forms of higher education, further contributing to high rates of unemployment and lower quality of life.
A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that autistic adults face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers.
[16] In the United States, recently published research[17] shows that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has not funded grants focused on the treatment of physical health disparity conditions, such as insomnia, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions, in autistic adults across four decades of research funding.
McDonald and Scudder (2023) explicitly distinguish health disparity conditions that affect the lives of autistic people from research grants focused on the cause, cure, and prevention of autism.
In the United States, the first Trump administration supported restrictive immigration policies that discriminated against autistic people.
[18][19] In Canada, autistic immigrants have been denied citizenship or they have faced deportation due to the perception that they are a "burden" upon the Canadian medical system.