IFS paper on disability benefit trends

Thu,21 May 2015
News Benefits

The changing characteristics of UK disability benefit recipients

This Institute for Fiscal Studies research paper finds that:

Spending across Great Britain on disability benefits in 2014–15 totalled £13.5 billion, half the level of disability benefit spending when it was at its peak in 1995–96.

The overall number of individuals receiving disability benefits has fallen slightly since the mid-1990s.

Disability benefit receipt is now more related to education (low education levels), and less related to age, than in the past.

The proportion of disability benefit claims being primarily for mental and behavioural health reasons has steadily increased between 1999 and 2014.