Disability, Illness And Pain Are Real Problems For The Entire Economy

30th August 2023

"Tackling them should be near the top of any list of social and economic priorities." Paul Johnson writes in the Times.

About one in five working-age adults in the UK is disabled. That is about eight million people of working age who report having a longstanding illness, disability or impairment (of more than 12 months) that limits daily activities such as moving around, communication or memory.

That is a very large group. In the space of a couple of years after the pandemic, the number of people putting in new claims and being awarded disability benefits literally doubled. More recently this has fallen back a little and the number of new claimants each month is "only" 50 per cent more than it was before Covid. We are set to spend £50 billion on various health and disability-related benefits for working-age adults this year.

The disabled are a group of great economic and social importance for whom we have enacted legislation to protect them from discrimination. Disability is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, as are, for example, gender, ethnicity and age. Yet we know less about the prevalence, causes and effects of inequalities in disabilities than for the other protected characteristics. The first analysis of the effect of the Covid outbreak on disabled workers, for example, emerged well after the worst of the pandemic had passed.

Read the full article HERE