Private Tenants and ‘Perverse Incentives’ in the Housing Benefit Scheme

P A Kemp and P McLaverty
Additional contact information
P A Kemp: ESRC Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies, Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RS, Scotland
P McLaverty: Department of Politics and Public Policy, University of Luton, Luton LU1 3JU, England

Environment and Planning C, 1998, vol. 16, issue 4, 395-409

Abstract: The authors examine whether private tenants receiving housing benefit have sought to take advantage of the perverse incentives which exist in the scheme. They look at recipients' reasons for moving to their present accommodation, whether they shopped around for accommodation, whether they moved upmarket to better accommodation, and whether they paid a premium for their accommodation compared with nonrecipients. It is concluded that, despite the perverse incentives, recipients had not generally moved to take advantage of the scheme, had shopped around for accommodation, and were not paying a ‘housing benefit premium’. Although some recipients were paying over the odds for their accommodation this reflected their poor position in the housing market compared with nonrecipients rather than a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the scheme.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c160395 (text/html)

Related works:
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:sae:envirc:v:16:y:1998:i:4:p:395-409

DOI: 10.1068/c160395

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().