Russia's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has necessitated that regular monitoring studies of the social situation of people with disabilities and families with disabled members be conducted. These studies have exacerbated the issue of obtaining accessible data that is suitable for these purposes. The article investigates specific concerns related to Russian disability statistics and the place of census data in compiling these statistics. The latter are of interest to the study of the social position of disabled persons in Russia. However, they have never been used for these purposes before. This article focuses on the analysis of the socioeconomic situation of families with disabled children as one of the most vulnerable groups in the population. We analyze the accuracy of the census estimates of the contingent of children with disabilities as compared against administrative data, and discover that the number of disabled children has been underreported, due to the inaccuracy of the disability criterion. We have assessed the composition of families with disabled children, the level of education and employment of parents, the livelihoods of these families, and the level of access of children to education on the basis of the recently released microdata from the 2002 and 2010 Russian Censuses. In light of these characteristics, we are able to demonstrate existing inequalities in the social status of families with disabled children in comparison with other families with children without disabilities. In conclusion, having determined the scope of the problem, we demonstrate the possibility for developing disability statistics as the foundation for implementing the principles of the CRPD. In particular, we propose methods for providing a social definition of disability by assessing functional status through continuous and sample surveys of the population. The use of standard international practices would allow assessing the social status of families with disabled children in a comparative perspective. [This article was translated by Kenneth Cargill.]