This report looks in detail at food insecurity among benefit claimants using YouGov surveys of the general public (n=2,600) and of claimants (n=6,300), both conducted for the Welfare at a (Social) Distance project in May/June 2021. We look at two measures of food insecurity:
Any food insecurity, where the quality and variety of people’s diets were affected by lack of money (e.g. people couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals in the last 30 days); Severe food insecurity, where the amount of food that people eat has been reduced by lack of money (e.g. cutting the size of/skipping meals in the last 30 days).We come to seven conclusions about benefits and food insecurity:
The latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation annual report finds that those who had been struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic have suffered the most financial damage during the crisis,
Poverty as measured by material deprivation through lack of economic resources remains absolutely central to understanding the causation of most aspects of social exclusion and a range of social outcomes, concludes the 2nd of the two-volume PSE-UK study.
The human cost of government imposed austerity should be a key issue, argue Vickie Cooper and David Whyte. Drawing on their new book, 'The Violence of Austerity', they set out how austerity is shaping people's lives and deaths.
Read the Journal papers coming from the PSE research. The latest paper examines how analyses of the micro paradata ‘by-products’ from the 1967/1968 Poverty in the United Kingdom (PinUK) and 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE) surveys highlight changes in the conditions of survey production over this 45 year period in the latest output from the PSE research.
A report by MPs has criticised the Department for Work and Pensions for a series of cases in which official statistics were used to 'spin' stories about benefit claimants, thereby encouraging 'negative preconceptions and prejudices'.
Each year as many as 68,000 people on jobseeker's allowance have their benefits taken away unfairly and face unnecessary hardship as a result, according to a new report from the Policy Exchange think tank. The report calls for the system of sanctions to be overhauled.
The total number of sanctions imposed on benefit claimants in the year to September 2013 was 897,690 – the highest figure for any 12-month period since jobseeker's allowance was introduced in 1996 – according to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The figures show the number of sanctions imposed under the tougher new regime introduced by the coalition government in October 2012. They cover jobseeker's allowance (JSA) and employment and support allowance (ESA).
Twenty-seven Church of England bishops have signed a letter condemning the coalition government's benefits reforms, which they say have forced people into food and fuel poverty.
In an open letter to the Prime Minister, published in the Daily Mirror to mark the beginning of Lent, the bishops – along with 16 representatives of other Churches – said that too many people were having to choose between 'heat or eat' as a result of 'cut backs and failures in the benefit system'.