Policy Hub
On 16 September 2009, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) published a report which sets out plans to move 600,000 households off welfare and into work.
This detailed review of the welfare system calculates that a radical recasting of state support for the jobless and low-paid – built around measures to make work pay and increase support for working couples – could lift more than 200,000 children out of poverty.
The report reveals that even before the recession, the welfare bill was growing faster than the inflation rate, up from £57 billion in 1997 to £74 billion-a-year.
As such, the report urges ministers to adopt a so-called “dynamic model” designed to predict the impact on the behaviour of claimants of changes to the benefits system.
At the core of CSJ’s recommendations are measures to make work pay and reduce the working couple penalty. The report concludes that under the present system, claimants are no better off – and sometimes poorer – if they quit the dole to take on low-paid jobs, typically those paying up to £15,000 a year.
Winners from such a programme of reform would be low-earning households working fewer than 30 or 16 hours a week. However, some higher earning families on more than £30,000 a year and receiving child tax credit would lose modest amounts of money.