Category Archive: Welfare trends report

Our Welfare trends report (WTR) examines the drivers of welfare spending.

Welfare fraud and error rates rose sharply during the Covid pandemic in 2020-21 and 2021-22, a period which also coincided with the rollout of universal credit. Our new analysis shows that the increase was mainly driven by those making new welfare claims during the pandemic, and so was likely primarily due to temporary operational easements…

Our 2026 Welfare trends report will be published on Tuesday 23 June. This edition of our biennial report will examine fraud and error in the welfare system.

The proportion of the working-age population in receipt of incapacity benefits reached a post-financial crisis high of 7.0 per cent in 2023-24 and is forecast to continue rising. This Welfare trends report focuses on the operation of the incapacity benefits system since 2010. Only a minority of the rise in incapacity benefits onflows over the…

Our 2024 Welfare trends report (WTR) will be published on Thursday 10 October. This biennial report will examine the drivers of spending on incapacity benefits over the last 50 years. Alongside this, we will also publish our 2024 Forecast evaluation report (FER) on Thursday 10 October. We will focus on our March 2023 forecast and…

This has been postponed in light of the announcement of a General Election on Thursday 4 July. Our 2024 Welfare trends report (WTR) will be published on 2 July. This biennial report will examine the drivers of spending on incapacity benefits. It will be released alongside the upcoming Fiscal risks and sustainability report. On 18…

The pandemic caused the deepest recession in the UK in living memory, prompted the largest fiscal policy response outside the World Wars, and has, so far, been followed by an unusually rapid economic recovery. The past two years also reshaped welfare spending and can be expected to continue to do so. So this year’s Welfare…

Our 2022 Welfare trends report will be published this morning at 11am. It will explore the implications of the pandemic-induced recession for non-pensioner welfare spending by comparing it to the previous three recessions in the UK.

Our latest Welfare trends report (WTR) will be published at 11am on Tuesday 24 May. Our biennial WTR examines the drivers of welfare spending. This year’s report will focus on changes in non-pensioner welfare spending during and after recessions, comparing the pandemic to the previous three UK recessions in the past half-century.

This year’s Welfare trends report (WTR) comes at the end of an extraordinary year that has resulted in the highest peacetime deficit in UK history. Virus-related support measures dominate that rise, but welfare spending (as defined in UK statistics, so not including the CJRS and SEISS) has also risen by £20.1 billion or 1.6 per…