Welfare reform - impact on households with children: report

A report that presents analysis of the impacts of UK Government reform on households with children in Scotland.


Footnotes

1. Welfare reform analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

2. Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022-2026 - annex 4: cumulative impact assessment - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

3. By adjusting for the composition of households we can make fair comparisons across them. A household with children has less disposable income per person, even if their earnings and housing costs are the same. See Appendix C.

4. This is distinct from the child poverty rates used in the rest of the report which are based on 60% of UK median income.

5. OECD Family Database - OECD

6. Working poverty analysis 2019 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

7. A number of devolved benefits, such as the Scottish Child Payment, are based on take up of reserved benefits.

8. These are: households with a lone parent, households with someone who is disabled, households with three or more children, minority ethnic households, households with a child under one, households with a mother under 25.

9. Impact of withdrawing emergency benefit measures - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

10. Reducing the Universal Credit taper rate and the effect on incomes (parliament.uk)

11. Value depends on whether a household receives support for housing costs

12. Includes all benefit expenditure, including those devolved to Scotland.

13. "Reduced benefit expenditure" analysis does not take account of the subsequent behavioural impacts of UK Government reform. If people are now more likely to work as a result of the reforms, we are likely to underestimate the size of the reduction in expenditure. No such caveat applies to "cost of reversal" analysis.

14. There is some evidence to suggest that data for people on very low incomes may not be reliable, with some under reporting of income possible (Brewer et al, 2017). This would mean that the actual percentage increases for people in this decile are over-stated.

15. * denotes that the result was suppressed due to a small sample size.

16. Small changes of below 5,000 are suppressed (marked as *) due to sample size. All figures are rounded to the nearest 10,000.

17. The impact of reversing both reforms may not be the sum of reversing each individually. Welfare reforms also change the value of the median income (and thus the poverty line) and, due to the shape of the income distribution curve, some reforms can outweigh the impact of others even when the individual impact is smaller. Rounding can exaggerate this effect.

18. As explained in a previous footnote, we suppress results when the change in number of people moved in or out of poverty is less than 5,000

19. Includes all benefit expenditure, including those devolved to Scotland.

20. * denotes that the result was suppressed due to a small sample size.

21. Small changes of below 5,000 are suppressed (marked as * ) due to sample size. All figures are rounded to the nearest 10,000.

22. The impact of reversing both reforms may not be the sum of reversing each individually. Welfare reforms also change the value of the median income (and thus the poverty line) and, due to the shape of the income distribution curve, some reforms can outweigh the impact of others even when the individual impact is smaller. Rounding can exaggerate this effect.

23. Includes all benefit expenditure, including those devolved to Scotland.

24. Expenditure would have been £14 million higher in the Benefit freeze reversal scenario had the benefit cap not been in place.

25. * denotes that the result was suppressed due to a small sample size.

26. Small changes of below 5,000 are suppressed (marked as * ) due to sample size. All figures are rounded to the nearest 10,000.

27. The impact of reversing both reforms may not be the sum of reversing each individually. Welfare reforms also change the value of the median income (and thus the poverty line) and, due to the shape of the income distribution curve, some reforms can outweigh the impact of others even when the individual impact is smaller. Rounding can exaggerate this effect.

28. Excludes the benefit cap

29. This is primarily expenditure on the Scottish Child Payment and Discretionary Housing Payments

30. Excludes scenarios where fewer than 5,000 people are moved out of poverty, even if more cost – effective.

31. Only those in poverty

32. Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022-2026 - annex 4: cumulative impact assessment - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

33. Income from employment - Tackling child poverty: second year progress report - annex C - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

34. Economic and fiscal outlook - October 2021 - Office for Budget Responsibility (obr.uk)

35. Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) – Estimates of full-time employee, full-time male and full-time female annual earnings by occupation and region, 2020 and 2021 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

36. Local Housing Allowance Rates: 2021-2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

 

Contact

Email: spencer.thompson@gov.scot

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