A key motivation
fueling welfare reform is the government’s desire to reduce the numbers of
people who qualify for disability benefits – whether this is the out-of-work
benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (previously Incapacity Benefit), or
the additional costs benefit, Personal Independence Payment (previously
Disability Living Allowance).
Yet the impact of
welfare reform will also increase the numbers of children growing into
adulthood with long-term impairment and/or ill health.
This is for two reasons:
1. In spite of the recent statistical blip (caused by the reduction in median income rather than by any real
decrease), child poverty is expected to rise from 2012-13 and – if nothing
stops this upward trend – one in four children will be living in poverty by2020.
2. Children who grow up in poverty are more
likely to acquire a long-term disabling condition by the time they reach adulthood.
This latter point is
revealed by research carried out by the Institute
of Health at the University of Warwick
which asked the question: “To what extent is early social disadvantage associated with long-term
disabling conditions in later childhood?” Analysing data for 1991 and 2001 from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study, they found:
•
The odds of developing chronic
disabling conditions in later childhood increased as the level of household
disadvantage rose
•
For children in the most
disadvantaged group in 1991, the odds of developing chronic disabling
conditions by 2001 were more than twice those for children living in the least
disadvantaged households.[i]
In other words, a
non-disabled child under the age of 10, whose parents are poor, is more likely
to become disabled by the age of 20 than a child whose parents are not poor.
When this research was raised in a recent House
of Lords debate, the response was: “The Government are indeed committed to tackling child poverty but believe that it is key to tackle the causes ratherthan to treat the symptoms”.
The problem is that current welfare reform
policies are based on an ideological, rather than an evidence-based, view of what
the causes of poverty are (as is very evident from the consultation on
changing how to measure child poverty).
At the heart of current welfare policy is the assumption that paid
employment is the route – the only route – out of poverty. This is despite evidence that there are more
poor families where at least one member of the household is working than where
no-one is working and 61% of children in poverty have at least one parent in work – up from 45% in the mid-nineties.
Rather than focus on the problem of in-work
poverty, however, the government’s ideologically driven approach to policy assumes,
not only that paid employment is the only route out of
poverty, but that it is the motivation and behaviour of individuals that is the
key barrier to getting work. Factors
over which people have no control – the number and type of jobs in their locality,
ill health or impairment, the behaviour of employers – are no longer recognised.
Poverty and
disadvantage are therefore to be tackled by instilling individual
responsibility and effort through financial incentives delivered by the benefit
system. It is this ideology which lies
behind welfare reform – the aim is that no-one will be better off on benefits
than in work, and that financial sanctions will create the motivation to get
into work. This principle – rather than
evidence – has driven welfare reform with the result that the legislation and
its implementation takes no account of real world factors which create
insuperable barriers for many people seeking work and affordable homes.
When we objected in
the 1980s to Margaret Thatcher’s ‘There is no such thing as society’ stance, we
were objecting to the notion that, in times of need, individuals could only
rely on themselves and their families, rather than also on the wider society. Today we have an approach which is in many
ways the other side of the same ideological coin – a refusal to recognise the
influence of socio-economic factors on individual life-chances.
The refusal to acknowledge the
influence of factors over which individuals have no control, is storing up
significant problems for the future. It
is ruining lives and will cost our society dearly.
Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the relationship between childhood disability and poverty. Current
government policies, by increasing childhood poverty, will increase the numbers
of children growing into adulthood affected by impairment and/or long-term ill
health. Once they reach adulthood,
however, they will meet a system which tells them that their reduced employment
prospects are down to their lack of motivation and their own individual
failings, and condemn them to a quality of life which doesn’t really bear
thinking about.
[i] This research was summarised by Lord Colin Low in a debate in the House of Lords on 11th
October http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/121011-0001.htm#12101112000573
.