Non-binary people's experiences in Scotland: evidence review

Socio-economic Inequalities

There are some data in existing research which discusses non-binary and trans people’s experiences of socioeconomic inequalities such as differences in benefits approval rates and ways in which they are impacted by the cost-of-living crisis.

Scottish Trans 2024^[38] reported key findings on socioeconomic issues for trans and non-binary respondents to their self-selection survey. The survey asked about the cost-of-living crisis and access to benefits. This report highlighted a key issue for trans people in that 52% of respondents said that rising costs had caused them to need to make decisions between essential household purchases and purchases relating to their transition. In addition, 33% of respondents of this survey reported claiming benefits. A majority (75%) felt their trans status, history or gender identity had not made it harder to receive benefits. But 7% felt it had, and 18% were unsure.

The Social Security Scotland client diversity and equalities analysis April 2023- March 2024^[39] demonstrated that trans clients had a slightly lower approval rate for benefits than clients who were not trans across all benefits. However, there was some variation in approval rates across specific benefits. For ‘Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods’ and Scottish Child Payment, approval rates were 51% and 75% for transgender clients, compared to 62% and 81% for clients that were not transgender. In contrast, the Adult Disability Payment, clients that identified as transgender had a higher approval rate at 63% compared to clients that did not identify as transgender at 55%. Although there were larger differences in approval rates for other benefits, the number of transgender clients were too low to make reliable comparisons of approval rates, more exploration of why there are differences between transgender and cisgender clients would be beneficial.

The above quantitative data suggests small differences between those who identify as a trans or non-binary person and those who do not. However, qualitative data in the Scottish Trans 2024^[40] Report highlighted challenging experiences for trans and non-binary people trying to access benefits, particularly around their records being deemed sensitive: “Due to the DWP/HMRC badly designed “special customer” system that they put trans people’s files into in order to restrict access to trans history info, it is extremely difficult to get help with benefit claims and tax issues as staff cannot see your file when you phone up. Also, the “special customer” restriction causes you to fail any online automated checks using your NINO to prove your identity.” This suggests a unique challenge for trans and non-binary people when accessing benefits.