Would the picture change if it was disposable income after housing costs that was being looked at?
If there is simply not enough money after rent is paid to cover energy and food costs is that a (individual) bad budgeting issue or is it simply not enough money to start with.
The latter would explain why the Welfare Advisory Working Group for example recommended increasing benefits.
I suppose a test of this would be to compare the state of low-income households before and after the 1991 benefit cuts?
Thanks Andrew. It would be possible to re-do most of this analysis with quintiles defined by disposable income after housing costs. One effect, I expect, would tend to move many Retired households into higher income quintiles, as many of these own homes and are more likely to have no or relatively low mortgage repayments. Shuffling households between quintiles would have secondary effects - making it hard to predict overall changes.
The bad-budgeting vs. not-enough-money question is interesting. I don’t think there is sufficient information in the HES dataset to shed more light. A worthwhile topic for another research project.
Lastly, the HES data in the IDI only goes back to 2005/06, so it cannot shed any light on 1991 policy changes. Do you know of any suitable datasets?
Not sure about suitable datasets. But understand that the Minister of Social Welfare at the time (1991 on) was getting regular (weekly?) reports on the impact of the benefit cuts - that might have sufficient quantitative data?
Would the picture change if it was disposable income after housing costs that was being looked at?
If there is simply not enough money after rent is paid to cover energy and food costs is that a (individual) bad budgeting issue or is it simply not enough money to start with.
The latter would explain why the Welfare Advisory Working Group for example recommended increasing benefits.
I suppose a test of this would be to compare the state of low-income households before and after the 1991 benefit cuts?
Thanks Andrew. It would be possible to re-do most of this analysis with quintiles defined by disposable income after housing costs. One effect, I expect, would tend to move many Retired households into higher income quintiles, as many of these own homes and are more likely to have no or relatively low mortgage repayments. Shuffling households between quintiles would have secondary effects - making it hard to predict overall changes.
The bad-budgeting vs. not-enough-money question is interesting. I don’t think there is sufficient information in the HES dataset to shed more light. A worthwhile topic for another research project.
Lastly, the HES data in the IDI only goes back to 2005/06, so it cannot shed any light on 1991 policy changes. Do you know of any suitable datasets?
Not sure about suitable datasets. But understand that the Minister of Social Welfare at the time (1991 on) was getting regular (weekly?) reports on the impact of the benefit cuts - that might have sufficient quantitative data?
This is great work thanks!