The Household Benefit Cap

Understanding the restriction of benefit income in Britain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2116201
AutoresChris Grover (0000-0002-3398-5403, Lancaster University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen51
Número1
Páginas2-19
Fecha de publicación2022-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Social Policy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-2794 • E-ISSN: 1469-7823
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047279420000550
OpenAlexW3097051086
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas40

Britain's Household Benefit Cap restricts the amount of benefit income unemployed households can receive. In this article, it is examined using material held at the UK's National Archives recording debates about a proposal to introduce a similar policy - a benefit limit - in the first Thatcher Conservative government elected in 1979. It was rejected, but the Household Benefit Cap was introduced three decades later. The article locates debates about, and the practice of restricting benefit income, in perennial social security concerns with the financial incentive to do waged work. The article argues that while there are material differences that help explain the different policy outcomes in 1980 and 2010, they can primarily be explained by changing ideas about the roles of social security policy, including the development of the 'incentive paradigm' concerned with manipulating behaviour; a loss of concern with the hardship that would come with the introduction of a benefit restriction and a view that institutions other than the state are better placed to address poverty and buttress work incentives

Conservative government · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Government (linguistics) · Incentive · Income Support · Labour economics · Macroeconomics · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Public economics · Social security · State (computer science) · Work (physics) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies