Rethinking incapacity: Attitudes to disability benefits entitlement and conditionality in the UK and Norway

Includes qualitative and quantitative data that help answer the question: Which people do the public think should be classified as 'incapacitated'? How should this be assessed? And should they be threatened with benefit sanctions if they don't do what Jobcentres ask them to do? More people claim out-of-work incapacity benefits than unemployment benefits in the UK, and this has been true throughout the recent recession - but we know little about what the public think about incapacity benefits. The data collection consists of: (1) Quantitative data: includes a comparative YouGov study of the UK and Norway, giving each respondent three pen-portraits ('vignettes') of different sorts of disabled and non-disabled benefit claimant to see which factors influence the public's responses. It also includes a follow-up study in the UK using the NatCen online panel. (2) Qualitative data include the results from six focus groups with the general public in the England in 2016, which also used vignettes but allowed a deeper investigation of how the public debated the situation of each one.

Over a million older people claim incapacity benefits in Britain, on the grounds that their health or disability stops them from working - four times as many as those claiming unemployment benefits, despite the downturn. But what does it actually mean to say that someone is 'incapacitated'? Take two people with identical impairments: a London-based graduate and an unskilled person in Merthyr Tydfil. The graduate may have better working conditions, an employer who is more willing to change the job to fit them, or be able to find another job that their health permits them to do. The unskilled worker may have none of these options, particularly if they are older and therefore more likely to have lower qualifications, to be biologically 'slowing down', and to face age-related discrimination. It is these ‘non-medical factors’ that are the focus of this project. The research firstly involves a statistical analysis of working conditions, adjustments and the availability of work in the UK and Europe. It then looks at whether the public and elites think that non-medical factors should be taken into account in assessing incapacity, using both a new survey and a series of workshops with different groups.

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