Welfare trends report – January 2019

Our annual Welfare trends report was published on 15 January 2019.

This year’s WTR reviews the effects of recent disability benefit reforms on spending, in particular the transition from Disability living allowance (DLA) to Personal independence payment (PIP). Read the overview.

pdf

Welfare trends report – January 2019

January 15, 2019 – 2.58 MB

Supporting documents

Boxes

Within each of our key publications we include topical ‘boxes’. These self-contained analyses are unique to this publication and tend to cover recent developments in the economy or public finances that complement the main discussion of our analyses.

Measurement issues with reported disability prevalence

Measures of reported disability prevalence are often subject to great variability and this can make drawing precise conclusions from them difficult. In this box, we considered two examples where measures varied. The first related to differences between Labour Force Survey and General Health Survey measures of working-age disability prevalence and the second to large changes in the former. We discussed differences in methodology and changes in attitudes as possible drivers.

Other welfare spending in support of disabled people

Public financial support for disabled people extends beyond the extra-costs disability benefits and includes several other welfare payments. This box gave an overview of some of the most important interactions between disability and other benefits that provide support for disabled people.

Benefit administration and data quality

Our ability to forecast accurately is heavily dependent on the quality of the data we can use. In this box we explained how statistical and expenditure data could be distorted by problems in delivery of the benefit, and the difficulties this creates in identifying emerging trends in the data.

Approaches to modelling PIP and DLA spending on working-age adults

There are several possible approaches to forecasting benefit spending. In this box we outlined the key issues the modelling of disability benefits needed to address, the three approaches we used to forecast spending, and the strengths and limitations of each, concluding that a combination of approaches was better than reliance on any single one.