Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Benefits for unemployed people
- Part 3 Benefits for disabled people
- Part 4 Benefits for children and families
- Part 5 Benefits for retirement
- Part 6 Towards a welfare class?
- References and further reading
- Index
11 - Institutional factors and disability benefits
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Benefits for unemployed people
- Part 3 Benefits for disabled people
- Part 4 Benefits for children and families
- Part 5 Benefits for retirement
- Part 6 Towards a welfare class?
- References and further reading
- Index
Summary
Summary
Aspects of the benefit regime and its implementation are implicated in the growth of disability benefit caseloads. This applies to both Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit.
Until recently Disability Living Allowance was payable for ‘life’, the effect of which has been to set caseloads on a trajectory of sustained growth.
The introduction of self-assessment for Disability Living Allowance may have helped to increase benefit up-take, while the appeals system and welfare rights activity may help partially to explain geographic variations in take-up.
Caseloads have also been inflated by changes in other institutions, notably in health and social services, through the closure of long-stay hospitals, with the result that more disabled people of working age are living in the community. A more proactive implementation of unemployment benefits by the Employment Service may also have inflated Incapacity Benefit caseloads to a degree.
Likewise, the activity of GPs has been proposed as an important determinant of Incapacity Benefit claim levels, but there is no evidence that changes in GPs’ behaviour explain the growth in caseloads.
Fraud was suspected as a factor in boosting disability benefit caseloads, notably Disability Living Allowance, although the evidence to date suggests that fraud and error are unlikely to be of sufficient scale to explain the extent of growth.
It is not possible to establish how important increased take-up has been in explaining rising caseloads.
Chapters 9 and 10 revealed that a major factor explaining the rising number of people claiming disability and incapacity benefits is the increased availability of such benefits. Supply has fostered demand.
But there is a series of more or less subtle ways in which welfare institutions have influenced caseloads, and these are the focus of the current chapter. Aspects of the benefit regime are considered first, before an examination of the influence of administrative procedures.
Benefit regime
The structure of benefits for disabled people has changed, not only in the scope of provision, but also in terms of the ways in which disability and incapacity are assessed, and in the use made of the appeals system to establish precedent. Moreover, developments in other areas of social security and social policy may also have affected demand for disability benefits.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Making of a Welfare Class?Benefit Receipt in Britain, pp. 137 - 152Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2000