Universal Credit: Welfare Reform and Mental Health

Mike Brewer, Thang Dang (thang.dang@thangdang.org) and Emma Tominey (emma.tominey@york.ac.uk)

No 15178, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The UK Universal Credit (UC) welfare reform simplified the benefits system whilst strongly incentivising a return to sustainable employment. Exploiting a staggered roll-out, we estimate the differential effect of entering unemployment under UC versus the former system on mental health. Groups with fewer insurance possibilities - single adults and lone parents – experience a mental health deterioration of 8.4-13.9% sd. For couples, UC partially or fully mitigates mental health consequences of unemployment. Exploring mechanisms, for single adults and lone parents, reduced benefit income and strict job search requirements dominate any positive welfare effects of the reduced administrative burden of claiming benefits.

Keywords: universal credit; decomposition; mediation; mental health; welfare reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 I10 I14 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2024, 98, 102940

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15178.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Universal Credit: Welfare Reform and Mental Health (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15178

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).