Disability Benefits, Welfare Reform and Employment Policy

by Lindsay, Colin; Houston, Donald

• ISBN13: 9780230349940
• ISBN10: 0230349943
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-05-24
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book aims to tackle the issues that are central to understanding and addressing one of the most important employment policy problems facing governments in the UK and beyond: the high number of people of working age claiming 'disability' or 'incapacity' benefits. Gathering evidence from leading UK scholars, alongside comparative contributions on Sweden, Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands, the book considers a number of questions including, how do health problems and other barriers work to combine to limit opportunities for labour market participation among claimants of IBs?; How do different local and regional economic conditions shape these individuals' opportunities and experiences of labour market exclusion?; What processes lead to transitions onto IBs and what could be done to retain people with health problems in employment?; How appropriate are the rationale, content and governance of active labour market policies that seek to promote transitions from IBs into work?; and what works in helping people claiming IBs to cope with health problems and/or make progress towards work?

Author Biography

Colin Lindsay is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and an Associate Member of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research (SCER) at the University of Strathclyde, UK. He has published extensively on labour market policies and welfare reform.

Donald Houston is Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK. He has 15 years' experience of research on poverty and inequality in the UK, spanning benefits, unemployment, housing and poor health and has published over 30 academic journal articles, book chapters and reports.

Table of Contents

1. Fit for Work? Representations and Explanations of the Disability Benefits 'Crisis' in the UK and Beyond; Colin Lindsay and Donald Houston
2. Disability Benefits in the UK: an Issue of Health or Jobs?; Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill
3. A History of Work-Disability; John Macnicol
4. Are Incapacity Benefit Claimants Beyond Employment? Exploring Issues of Employability; Anne Green and Ian Shuttleworth
5. Redefining 'Fit for Work': Welfare Reform and the Introduction of Employment Support Allowance; Helen Barnes and Paul Sissons
6. A Health Problem? Health and Employability in the UK Labour Market; Jon Warren, Kayleigh Garthwaite and Clare Bambra
7. The Interaction of Health, Labour Market Conditions and Long-Term Sickness Benefit Claims in a Post-Industrial City: A Glasgow Case Study; David Webster, Judith Brown, Ewan B. Macdonald and Ivan Turok
8. The Impact of the UK's Disability Benefit Reforms; Christina Beatty, Steve Fothergill and Donald Houston
9. Germany: Attempting to Activate the Long-Term Unemployed with Reduced Working Capacity; Martin Brussig and Matthias Knuth
10. Incapacity Benefits – Change and Continuity in the Swedish Welfare State; Rickard Ulmestig
11. From Dutch Disease to Dutch Fitness? Two Decades of Disability Crisis in the Netherlands; Rik Van Berkel
12. New Zealand's Reform of Sickness Benefit and Invalid's Benefit; Neil Lunt and Daniel Horsfall
13. Fit for Purpose? Lessons for Policies to Address the Disability Benefits 'Crisis'; Donald Houston and Colin Lindsay