Dear all
Thought I'd ask here as there are many people more knowledgeable about health data than myself.
I'm looking at DWP figures for health related benefits, where DWP people (and others) keep saying that because life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy have gone up, health related benefits **should** fall below 1970s/1980s levels.
Their explanation is that medical and social ideas have changed so that people who would not have been regarded as sick in the 1970s are now regarded as sick and so on benefits - justifying a harsh regime to revert to the 1970s % on health benefits.
What I think is the case is that demographic change (age-structure) of the population would itself have produced a rise in health related benefit claims simply because people 40+ are more likely to acquire disabling ill health. The age pattern itself being structured by class as well.
We do of course as well have the end of 'light work' being done by people with health conditions in workplaces due to pressures to raise productivity etc.
And... does anyone have any figures on the numbers of people turfed out of NHS institutions onto DWP benefits as a result of 'Care in the Community'. Not to say it wasn't the right thing to do, but there was a clear financial transfer from health to DWP budgets (benefit + housing benefit + CLG Supporting People that's now gone).
It looks to me as though the DWP people forget all of this and just think people are acting sick.
Is there stuff I am missing on this because health service info is so difficult to find?
Thanks
Paul Bivand
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Paul Bivand
Associate Director of Analysis and Statistics
Direct Line: 020 7840 8335
Twitter: @PaulBivandCESI
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