Navigating pandemic social security : benefits, employment and crisis support during COVID-19

An expanding range of external actors and organisations have come to mediate the relationship between benefit claimants and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Reflecting on the important role benefits, crisis and employment support play in the lives of claimants, this report looks at two dimensions of navigating social security in the UK today. The first section of this report draws on a large representative survey of working-age benefit claimants (i.e. aged 18–64) to establish the extent to which people access support when making a claim for benefits and how this differs according to key claimant characteristics. The second section of this report explores how COVID-19 has affected the coverage and quality of support that many benefit claimants rely on through case studies of four local areas (Leeds, Newham, Salford and Thanet). Here, we draw on qualitative interviews with 32 local support organisations and meetings with 13 national informants representing key stakeholder groups and service delivery organisations

Success and failure in narrowing the disability employment gap: comparing levels and trends across Europe 2002–2014

Background: International comparisons of the disability employment gap are an important driver of policy change. However, previous comparisons have used the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), despite known comparability issues. We present new results from the higher-quality European Social Survey (ESS), compare these to EU-SILC and the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), and also examine trends in the disability employment gap in Europe over the financial crisis for the first time. Methods: For cross-sectional comparisons of 25 countries, we use micro-data for ESS and EU-SILC for 2012 and compare these to published EU-LFS 2011 estimates. For trend analyses, we use seven biannual waves of ESS (2002–2014) with a total sample size of 182,195, and annual waves of EU-SILC (2004–2014) with a total sample size of 2,412,791. Results: (i) Cross-sectional: countries that have smaller disability employment gaps in one survey tend to have smaller gaps in the other surveys. Nevertheless, there are some countries that perform badly on the lower-quality surveys but better in the higher-quality ESS. (ii) Trends: the disability employment gap appears to have declined in ESS by 4.9%, while no trend is observed in EU-SILC – but this has come alongside a rise in disability in ESS. Conclusions: There is a need for investment in disability measures that are more comparable over time/space. Nevertheless, it is clear to policymakers there are some countries that do consistently well across surveys and measures (Switzerland), and others that do badly (Hungary)