News

A feature article on the impending loss of ‘food stamps’ for those living in poverty in the United States cites the WelCond project’s evidence from the UK.

Abby Vesoulis’ feature ‘I Think People Will Starve.’ Experts Are Worried About the Hundreds of Thousands Who Could Lose Food Stamps Come April says 700,000 people could lose this vital part of the US social security system. In addition, new proposals would see work requirements extended from those up to age 49 to people up to 65.

The article goes on to explore the question of whether linking social security eligibility to work requirements is effective. It cites our WelCond project’s findings that mandatory requirements are not effective and actually create many negative effects including some people turning to ‘survival crime’.

WelCond Co-Investigator Prof Suzanne Fitzpatrick from Heriot-Watt University added: ‘There is certainly an impact on how many people claim benefits, but that’s not at all the same as saying you’ve moved people into work. Often, what you’ve done is just make them destitute, or dependent on other, more problematic ways of getting by.’

There is little doubt that in the ensuing years since the financial crash and expiation via austerity exercised upon the most vulnerable, the Irish social security system has undergone a meaningful qualitative change. In this new blog Dr Philip Finn from Maynooth University comments on his research with jobseekers in County Kildare. Read more

A new guest blog from Danny Taggart, Ellen Clifford, Jaimini Mehta and Ewen Speed discusses their research which points to fundamental problems with the welfare system.

They report on a collaborative research project was initiated between academics at the University of Essex and Inclusion London, a disabled people’s user-led organisation (DPULO). They found that conditionality and sanctions are ineffective in incentivising disabled people to engage in work-related activity. Instead they create a range of punitive and often perverse incentives that can be detrimental to health. Read the blog

The WelCond project is delighted to be cited in the final report of UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston being presented in Geneva today (27 June). Professor Alston’s hard hitting report on extreme poverty in the UK strongly criticises the welfare benefits system and concludes: ‘Much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.’

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Tom Boland & Ray Griffin from Waterford Institute of Technology reflect on the difficulties of achieving policy change

Stasis is not the same as inertia; it is the state where opposing forces cancel each other out, like a car skidding on ice; the wheels spin but the car doesn’t move.

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New Zealand’s current welfare system is no longer fit for purpose and needs fundamental change, according to the government appointed Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

The group’s report says the current social security system ‘was set up in a different time and no longer meets the needs of those it was designed to support’. Successive governments have implemented changes to the system with intended and unintended consequences. Read More

Our project findings on the negative effects of benefit sanctions were cited in two major newspapers recently.

In The Guardian, Social Policy Editor Patrick Butler reported on the Department for Work & Pensions’ decision to stop imposing three-year benefit sanctions by the end of the year. Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she agreed with the Work & Pensions Select Committee (to which WelCond also gave evidence) that three-year sanctions are ‘unnecessarily long’. She also said three-year sanctions ‘are counter-productive and ultimately undermine our goal of supporting people into work’. Patrick Butler’s article cited the WelCond finding that ‘sanctions were ineffective at getting jobless people into work and were more likely to reduce those affected to poverty, ill-health or even survival crime’.

Meanwhile, in the New York Times columnist Courtney E Martin raised the question: ‘Does anyone deserve to be poor?’ Writing her series on enduring economic inequality in the United States, Ms Martin considers the advantages of a guaranteed income. She moves on to cite WelCond’s finding that placing conditions on receipt of benefits did not improve the lives of those it was intended to serve, did not increase motivation to work and pushed people further into poverty and negative consequences.