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24 May 2022

Welfare trends report – May 2022

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

In this WTR, we explored the implications of the pandemic-induced recession for non-pensioner welfare spending by comparing it to the previous three recessions.

pdf

Welfare trends report – May 2022

May 24, 2022 – 903.90 KB

Supporting documents

  • xlsx

    May 2022 Welfare trends report – charts and tables

    May 24, 2022 – 854.42 KB

Presentations

  • pdf

    May 2022 Welfare trends report – roundtable speaking notes

    May 24, 2022 – 86.55 KB
  • pdf

    May 2022 Welfare trends report – roundtable presentation slides

    May 24, 2022 – 281.81 KB

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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.

Welfare trends report - May 2022 | Box: 3.1 | Page: 49

Benefit uprating during and after recessions

Chart 3.A: Real value of selected benefit rates following recessions
The real-terms value of benefits was forecast to fall by around 5 per cent in 2022-23 (£12 billion in total) before catching up the year after, largely due to the significant rise in inflation and the lag in benefit uprating. In this box we compared these post-pandemic uprating dynamics to the real value of non-pensioner benefit rates following the previous three recessions. This showed that the forecast trough in the real value of benefits was deeper in the wake of the pandemic than for any of the previous three recessions.

Fiscal categories: Child benefit, Welfare spending, Universal credit, Unemployment benefits, Incapacity and disability benefits

Cross-cutting categories: Coronavirus

Welfare trends report - May 2022 | Box: 4.1 | Page: 67

The impact of the pandemic on child benefit take-up

Chart 4.A: Child benefit take-up rates for 0-year-olds
Take-up of child benefit had been declining since 2012-13, but this downwards trend accelerated at the onset of the Covid pandemic in March 2020, which resulted in a steep decline in take-up over the subsequent 18 months. In this box, we considered the main drivers of the child benefit caseload and the effect the pandemic had on each of them. We set out the reasons why the pandemic contributed to lower take-up, and then considered the medium-term impact of the pandemic-driven drop in take-up on our forecast.

Fiscal categories: Child benefit, Welfare spending

Cross-cutting categories: Coronavirus

Welfare trends report – March 2021

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