An impossible move? Households’ experiences of trying to escape the UK’s benefit cap

Ruth Patrick, Kate Andersen, Mark Fransham, Maddy Power, Aaron Reeves and Kitty Stewart

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Recent governments, both in the UK and internationally, have increasingly used their power to attempt to alter the behaviour of people in receipt of social security benefits. This can be seen in the case of the UK’s benefit cap, a policy introduced with the specific goal of changing behaviour by capping social security support at the household level. Alongside promoting transitions into employment, there was also a focus on encouraging households to move to cheaper accommodation, something which was portrayed as achievable by those defending the policy. Drawing on case studies from qualitative longitudinal research with parents affected by the benefit cap, this article demonstrates that individuals are, in fact, relatively powerless to change their housing situations, which are routinely already overcrowded and of poor quality, even where rents are very high. Instead, affected households experience state-imposed hardship. We problematise both the cap itself and the governmental narrative that knowingly ascribes social security recipients with a power they do not have.

Keywords: poverty; social security; housing; benefit cap; power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2026-06-29
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Published in Journal of Social Policy, 29, June, 2026. ISSN: 0047-2794

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