IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v162y2016icp1-10.html

The impact on health of employment and welfare transitions for those receiving out-of-work disability benefits in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Curnock, Esther
  • Leyland, Alastair H.
  • Popham, Frank

Abstract

Employment status has a dynamic relationship with health and disability. There has been a striking increase in the working age population receiving out-of-work disability benefits in many countries, including the UK. In response, recent UK welfare reforms have tightened eligibility criteria and introduced new conditions for benefit receipt linked to participation in return-to-work activities. Positive and negative impacts have been suggested but there is a lack of high quality evidence of the health impact when those receiving disability benefits move towards labour market participation. Using four waves of the UK’s Understanding Society panel survey (2009–2013) three different types of employment and welfare transition were analysed in order to identify their impact on health. A difference-in-difference approach was used to compare change between treatment and control groups in mental and physical health using the SF-12. To strengthen causal inference, sensitivity checks for common trends used pre-baseline data and propensity score matching. Transitions from disability benefits to employment (n = 124) were associated on average with an improvement in the SF12 mental health score of 5.94 points (95% CI = 3.52–8.36), and an improvement in the physical health score of 2.83 points (95% CI = 0.85–4.81) compared with those remaining on disability benefits (n = 1545). Transitions to unemployed status (n = 153) were associated with a significant improvement in mental health (3.14, 95% CI = 1.17–5.11) but not physical health. No health differences were detected for those who moved on to the new out-of-work disability benefit. It remains rare for disability benefit recipients to return to the labour market, but our results indicate that for those that do, such transitions may improve health, particularly mental health. Understanding the mechanisms behind this relationship will be important for informing policies to ensure both work and welfare are ‘good for health’ for this group.

Suggested Citation

  • Curnock, Esther & Leyland, Alastair H. & Popham, Frank, 2016. "The impact on health of employment and welfare transitions for those receiving out-of-work disability benefits in the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1-10.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:162:y:2016:i:c:p:1-10
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.05.042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953616302702
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.05.042?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gebel, Michael & Voßemer, Jonas, 2014. "The impact of employment transitions on health in Germany. A difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 128-136.
    2. Bambra, Clare & Whitehead, Margaret & Hamilton, Val, 2005. "Does 'welfare-to-work' work? A systematic review of the effectiveness of the UK's welfare-to-work programmes for people with a disability or chronic illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 1905-1918, May.
    3. Ayala, Luis & Rodríguez, Magdalena, 2013. "Health-related effects of welfare-to-work policies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 103-112.
    4. Rueda, S. & Chambers, L. & Wilson, M. & Mustard, C. & Rourke, S.B. & Bayoumi, A. & Raboud, J. & Lavis, J., 2012. "Association of returning to work with better health in working-aged adults: A systematic review," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 102(3), pages 541-556.
    5. Christina Beatty & Stephen Fothergill & Rob Macmillan, 2000. "A Theory of Employment, Unemployment and Sickness," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(7), pages 617-630, October.
    6. Martin Huber & Michael Lechner & Conny Wunsch, 2011. "Does leaving welfare improve health? Evidence for Germany," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 484-504, April.
    7. Roelfs, David J. & Shor, Eran & Davidson, Karina W. & Schwartz, Joseph E., 2011. "Losing life and livelihood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of unemployment and all-cause mortality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(6), pages 840-854, March.
    8. Carola Grün & Wolfgang Hauser & Thomas Rhein, 2010. "Is Any Job Better than No Job? Life Satisfaction and Re-employment," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 285-306, September.
    9. Sascha O. Becker & Andrea Ichino, 2002. "Estimation of average treatment effects based on propensity scores," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 2(4), pages 358-377, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samia Badji & Anne Kavanagh & Dennis Petrie, 2023. "The impact of Disability Insurance reassessment on healthcare use," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(7), pages 1581-1602, July.
    2. Lindsey Richardson & Anita Minh & Deb McCormack & Allison Laing & Skye Barbic & Kanna Hayashi & M.-J. Milloy & Kimberly R. Huyser & Kathleen Leahy & Johanna Li, 2022. "Cohort Profile: The Assessing Economic Transitions (ASSET) Study—A Community-Based Mixed-Methods Study of Economic Engagement among Inner-City Residents," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-24, August.
    3. Marina Romeo & Montserrat Yepes-Baldó & Josep Pascual, 2025. "Understanding Gendered Employment Dynamics: Demographic Profiles and Characteristics of Individuals With Disabilities in Spain," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(4), pages 21582440251, November.
    4. Simpson, Julija & Albani, Viviana & Bell, Zoe & Bambra, Clare & Brown, Heather, 2021. "Effects of social security policy reforms on mental health and inequalities: A systematic review of observational studies in high-income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    5. Jacob Katuva & Rob Hope & Tim Foster & Johanna Koehler & Patrick Thomson, 2020. "Modelling Welfare Transitions to Prioritise Sustainable Development Interventions in Coastal Kenya," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-22, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hye Yoon Chung & Youjin Hahn, 2021. "Correction to: Work Transitions, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(5), pages 2111-2111, October.
    2. Ayala, Luis & Rodríguez, Magdalena, 2013. "Health-related effects of welfare-to-work policies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 103-112.
    3. Pei‐An Liao & Hung‐Hao Chang & Yi‐Ju Su, 2020. "Cash transfer program and child underweight—Empirical evidence from a causal mediation analysis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(2), pages 291-303, March.
    4. Eggs, Johannes, 2013. "Unemployment benefit II, unemployment and health," IAB-Discussion Paper 201312, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    5. Leombruni, Roberto & Razzolini, Tiziano & Serti, Francesco, 2013. "The pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of job displacement—The risky job of being back to work," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 205-216.
    6. Scheuring, Sonja & Voßemer, Jonas & Baranowska-Rataj, Anna & Tattarini, Giulia, 2021. "Does Fixed-Term Employment Have Spillover Effects on the Well-Being of Partners? A Panel Data Analysis for East and West Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 22(7), pages 3001-3021.
    7. Paolo Naticchioni & Silvia Loriga, 2011. "Short and Long Term Evaluations of Public Employment Services in Italy," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 57(3), pages 201-229.
    8. Zhang, Yingjie & Zhang, Tianzheng & Zeng, Yingxiang & Cheng, Baodong & Li, Hongxun, 2021. "Designating National Forest Cities in China: Does the policy improve the urban living environment?," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    9. Iñigo Gallo & Domènec Melé, 2025. "Work Integration of People with Mental Disorders Through Social Enterprise: A Humanistic-Personalist Framework and Case Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 199(4), pages 693-713, July.
    10. Dettmann, E. & Becker, C. & Schmeißer, C., 2011. "Distance functions for matching in small samples," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 1942-1960, May.
    11. Amarendra Sharma, 2019. "Indira Awas Yojana and Housing Adequacy: An Evaluation using Propensity Score Matching," ASARC Working Papers 2019-05, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    12. Katchova, Ani L., 2010. "Agricultural Contracts and Alternative Marketing Options: A Matching Analysis," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 261-276, May.
    13. Hirota, Haruaki & Iwata, Kazuyuki & Tanaka, Kenta, 2022. "Is public official training effective at reducing costs? Evidence from survey data on Japanese municipal mergers," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 145-158.
    14. Bemile, Esther & Anders, Sven M., 2014. "Linking Diet-Health Behaviour and Obesity using Propensity Score Matching," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182832, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Kalaj, Ermira Hoxha, 2009. "Do Remittances Alter Labor Market Participation? A Study of Albania," MPRA Paper 48271, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Federico Biagi & Daniele Bondonio & Alberto Martini, 2015. "Counterfactual Impact Evaluation of Enterprise Support Programmes. Evidence from a Decade of Subsidies to Italian Firm," ERSA conference papers ersa15p1619, European Regional Science Association.
    17. Martin Schlotter & Guido Schwerdt & Ludger Woessmann, 2011. "Econometric methods for causal evaluation of education policies and practices: a non-technical guide," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 109-137.
    18. Shapiro, Joseph & Trevino, Jorge Moreno, 2004. "Compensatory education for disadvantaged Mexican students : an impact evaluation using propensity score matching," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3334, The World Bank.
    19. Li, Linjie & Liu, Xiaming & Yuan, Dong & Yu, Miaojie, 2017. "Does outward FDI generate higher productivity for emerging economy MNEs? – Micro-level evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 839-854.
    20. Sakaue, Katsuki, 2018. "Informal fee charge and school choice under a free primary education policy: Panel data evidence from rural Uganda," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 112-127.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:socmed:v:162:y:2016:i:c:p:1-10. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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.