Is the working-age population less healthy since the pandemic? What role is changing health playing in rising health-related benefit claims?

12th March 2025

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the number of people getting health-related benefits. In England and Wales, 4 million 16- to 64-year-olds (1 in 10) now claim either disability or incapacity benefits, up from 2.8 million in 2019 (1 in 13).

One potential contributor to these trends is worsening health. In this report, we consider what we can learn from various sources about what has happened to working-age health since the pandemic, taking into account the difficulties surveys have had over the past few years.

Key findings
More than half of the rise in 16- to 64-year-olds claiming disability benefits since the pandemic is due to more claims relating to mental health or behavioural conditions. 1.3 million people claim disability benefits primarily for mental health or behavioural conditions - 44% of all claimants. A recent DWP survey suggests 86% of incapacity and disability benefit claimants report having a mental health condition (even if it is not their primary condition).

Mental health conditions are becoming more common amongst the working-age population. 13-15% of the working-age population reported a long-term mental or behavioural health condition in the latest data, up from 8-10% in the mid 2010s. The rise in people reporting mental health conditions holds across a wide range of surveys. In most surveys, the increase in reported mental health conditions is a continuation of the pre-pandemic trend rather than a rapid worsening following the pandemic. Worsening mental health can help explain the rise in disability benefit claims, but the nature of the trend - a consistent rise - suggests it is unlikely to be the sole explanation for observed disability benefit trends, which were relatively stable before rising rapidly post-pandemic.

Working-age mortality rates have consistently remained above their pre-pandemic levels since 2020. Mortality rates provide another source of information on changing population health, and they help corroborate self-reported health measures from surveys. In 2024, the working-age mortality rate was 1.5% above the 2015–19 average – equal to 1,200 additional deaths after adjusting for changing population size and age. In 2023 (the latest year with data on cause of death), the mortality rate was 5.5% above the 2015–19 average – equivalent to 4,400 additional deaths.

Most of the additional deaths were ‘deaths of despair' – deaths due to alcohol, suicide or drugs. After adjusting for changing population size and ageing, there were 3,700 (24%) more working-age ‘deaths of despair' in 2023 than the 2015–19 average. People with mental health conditions are at much higher risk of ‘deaths of despair', so the rise in these deaths is consistent with an increase in (severe) mental health problems.

36% more people were in contact with mental health services in 2024 than in 2019 (based on areas of England with consistent data). Overall, 2 million people (0.6 million children and 1.4 million adults) were in contact with mental health services at the end of December 2024. This includes people waiting for care. Since 2019, there has also been a 12% increase in the number of people in England receiving antidepressants. This rise partly reflects NHS actions to improve access to mental health care but is also consistent with rising incidence of mental health problems.

There is disagreement between surveys on how the total number of people with health conditions has changed since 2019. Some high-profile analysis has suggested that there has been no rise in the share of working-age adults with long-term health conditions. This analysis relies on surveys that do not show any rise in the share of people claiming disability benefits since 2019 – in contradiction to what we know has happened from administrative data. This raises questions around how accurately these surveys are capturing the health of the population overall. Surveys that do show the rise in people claiming disability benefits since 2019 – the Labour Force Survey and the Family Resources Survey – also show a rise in people with long-term health conditions and a rise in people with physical health conditions. However, both these sources have seen big falls in the share of people surveyed who respond since the pandemic, which suggests some caution in interpreting their results too.

Sickness absence days per worker were 37% higher in 2022 than in 2019. Looking at changes between 2019 and 2023 for public sector workers in particular – where better-quality data are available – confirms this trend. Sickness absence rates increased by 29% for teachers, 19% in the Civil Service and 14% in the NHS over this period. Changing population health may not be the only driver of the increase in sickness absence rates, but this does provide further evidence to support the argument that population health has worsened.

Read the full IFS report HERem
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