IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jhecon/v98y2024ics0167629624000857.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Universal Credit: Welfare reform and mental health

Author

Listed:
  • Brewer, Mike
  • Dang, Thang
  • Tominey, Emma

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 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% standard deviations which persists into the subsequent year. 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Brewer, Mike & Dang, Thang & Tominey, Emma, 2024. "Universal Credit: Welfare reform and mental health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:98:y:2024:i:c:s0167629624000857
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2024.102940
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629624000857
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2024.102940?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Welfare reform; Mental health; Mediation; Universal Credit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:98:y:2024:i:c:s0167629624000857. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505560 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.