A poor choice of words in my opinion and fortunate most of us are not.
However, if we take disability out of the equation and look back at Victorian times. The vast majority of people lived hand to mouth, worked 7 days a week 16 hour days apart from Sunday when they would be allowed a few hours to attend church. The majority of working class city dwellers lived in slums! 2% of people owned 98% of the countries wealth, and if you were unfortunate enough to not have the ability to work or you would be banished to the work houses, worked like slaves and eat grul for food. So, in this respect life is better now than in our forefathers times! This was probability his point.