Research
Understanding the rising numbers of women claiming incapacity benefits in the UK
ESRC-funded research being conducted by a team from CRESR and Dundee University aims to understand the rising number of women claiming incapacity benefits in the United Kingdom.
Click here to download a copy of Women on Incapacity Benefits (PDF 2.24MB)
Overview
The number of women claiming incapacity benefits has been rising steadily for more than twenty years and is now nearly 1.1 million, representing one in 16 women of working age in the United Kingdom nationally and around one in nine in former industrial areas. Conventional explanations for the rising number of men claiming incapacity benefits have focused on the impact of declining manual job opportunities, particularly in older industrial areas where recipients of these benefits are over represented. It is not obvious that the same explanations can be applied to women, for whom there have been rising job opportunities over a long period, even in most of Britain's less prosperous areas.
This research seeks to provide that explanation for women and has the following specific aims
- to identify the causes of the rise in the number of women claiming incapacity benefits over the last thirty years
- to investigate why the proportion of women claiming incapacity benefits varies so much across the country
- to critically assess the adequacy of conventional 'welfare dependency' and 'rational choice' accounts in explaining the experience of women on incapacity benefits
- to understand women on incapacity benefits in the context of the household, the labour market and other forms of economic inactivity, in particular to assess the extent to which women incapacity claimants can be represented as involuntarily unemployed
- to identify the policy interventions most likely to assist in overcoming barriers to entering employment faced by women incapacity claimants
In order to address the above aims, the research comprises three key strands
- Strand 1 - analysis of secondary data
- Strand 2 - a survey of over 3,000 women claiming incapacity benefits in eight local areas
- Strand 3 - in-depth interviews with claimants (80 interviews) and professional stakeholders (40 interviews)
The eight local case studies are comprised of four types of area which exhibit significant incapacity claimant rates
- urban - Kingston upon Hull and Knowsley
- former coal mining areas - Easington and Wansbeck
- seaside towns - Blackpool, East Lindsey and Great Yarmouth
- Northern industrial town - Barrow-in-Furness
Reports and other outputs
- Barrow's Incapacity Claimants (PDF 291KB) - Report to Furness Enterprise, 2007
- Women on Incapacity Benefits: New Survey Evidence (PDF 504KB) - Working Paper
- Changes in the profile of men claiming incapacity benefits: A case study (PDF 132KB) - Paper Published in People, Place and Policy Online
For more information about the project, the research team and access to other Reports please visit the project website at www.geographyandgender.org.
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