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
20 - Reflecting on benefit receipt by families and children
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
Changes in attitudes, behaviour and in the labour market outweighed declines in fertility that should have reduced the number of families with children claiming benefit.
Changes in sexual relations and in the stability of relationships led to an increase in lone parenthood, especially lone motherhood.
The declining age of lone parents and their children, perhaps combined with slack labour demand, caused a fall in the proportion of lone parents in paid work and, until 1993/94, a corresponding increase in the proportion claiming out of work benefits.
Unemployment increased the reliance of two-parent families on benefit.
In-work benefits – introduced to offset the work disincentive effects of mean-tested benefits – created a new class of employed social security recipient, mostly comprising one and two parent families.
Despite the fact that the number of children aged under 16 fell markedly between 1971 and 1999, far more children and families were receiving benefit at the end of the 1990s than had been doing so at the beginning of the 1970s. Although, as always, the reasons are complex, there is a clear story to tell. Declines in fertility were outweighed by new claims on social security that resulted from new family forms, which in turn reflected a changed morality (Figure 20.1). At the same time, developments in the labour market eroded the self-sufficiency of families, and government sought to alleviate this situation by creating new inwork benefits, which meant that employment no longer ended reliance on means-tested benefits.
Two policy changes – one indigenous to social security, the other exogenous – more or less complete the picture. Introducing Child Benefit effectively guaranteed that every family with children would receive at least one social security benefit (since non-take-up of this universal benefit has always been negligible). The exogenous policy was housing, and the change in strategy from subsidising ‘bricks and mortar’ towards targeting low-income households. As a result, social security inadvertently became an instrument of housing policy, and families with children were forced to claim social security on account of their housing costs.
Lone parents
The tripling in the number of lone parent families between 1971 and 1998 changed the contours of social security provision.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Making of a Welfare Class?Benefit Receipt in Britain, pp. 237 - 242Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2000