Policy-makers have increasingly turned to ‘in-work transfers’ to boost incomes among poorer workers and strengthen work incentives. One attraction of these is that labour supply elasticities are typically greatest at the extensive margin. Because in-work transfers are normally subject to...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the number of people getting health-related benefits. In England and Wales, 4 million 16- to 64-year-olds (1 in 10) now claim either disability or incapacity benefits, up from 2.8 million in 2019 (1 in 13). One potential...

We examine the living standards and health of working-age disabled people and disability benefits recipients over time in the UK. The UK’s disability benefits system (which is non-means-tested and in which receipt is unrelated to work status) has gone through a significant transformation since...

The introduction of universal credit (UC) has been the most significant reform to the workingage benefits system since the reforms following the post-war Beveridge Report. When fully rolled out, around 8 million families - 29% of all working-age families - will be entitled to the benefit. UC is...

The past 14 years have witnessed an enormous amount of reform to the tax and benefit system. While it is tempting for politicians to draw attention to one set of reforms or another, what matters for household incomes is the whole system. In this report, we study the impact of policy changes to...

Individuals in the UK with health conditions may be entitled to two types of benefits - incapacity benefits (for those whose condition prevents them from working) and disability benefits (to help with extra living costs arising from the disability). Since the onset of the pandemic, there has...

Of the 8.4 million children in English state schools, 3.4 million are eligible to get a free meal at school each day. Just under 2 million of these children are eligible through the means-tested system, which includes children whose families are receiving certain means-tested benefits and on...