Policy has long been based on the assumption that disabled people are either capable, or incapable, of work. This paper extends earlier analyses which show that the probability of employment is a variable, not an absolute. The disability employment penalty varies by number, type, severity and...

Economic disadvantage is an increasingly important component of the social position of disabled people.This article uses a large-scale and detailed survey of disabled people as an empirical platform for a discussion of their employment outcomes. It is well-established that disabled people vary...

The Department for Work and Pensions committed itself to exploring the take-up of Carer’s Allowance at the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in May 2009. This study was commissioned as a first step in that enquiry. The report summarises the questions and discusses possible...

Research in many countries has confirmed that teenage mothers and their families are often at a disadvantage compared with those whose children are born in their twenties or thirties. But there has never been an opportunity for a systematic comparison between countries, based on a common data...

Social security benefits designed to meet the extra costs faced by disabled people have been in place since the early 1970s, and currently cost nearly £15 billion per year. Over the period the benefits have enjoyed bilateral political support, and the only major changes (eg in 1992) have been...

Attendance Allowance and the care component of Disability Living Allowance are paid to nearly four million elderly or disabled people who need to help in their daily lives. In the course of recent debate about financing the growing demand for social care services, the Wanless report (2006)...

The research compares the employment prospects of disadvantaged social groups in Britain over the past 30 years. It uses data from the General Household Survey, conducted almost every year between 1974 and 2003, with a total sample of 368,000 adults aged 20 to 59. A logistic regression equation...