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Poverty and Sources of Income Support Among Older People With Disabilities and Out of Work: Comparison of Canada and the United Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2021

WEN-HAO CHEN Open the ORCID record for WEN-HAO CHEN [Opens in a new window] ,
LEE BENTLEY ,
MARGARET WHITEHEAD ,
ASHLEY MCALLISTER  and
BENJAMIN BARR
WEN-HAO CHEN
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, National Taipei University, No. 151, University Rd., Sanxia Dist., New Taipei City 237303, Taiwan (R.O.C.) email: [email protected]
LEE BENTLEY
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health and Policy, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom emails [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
MARGARET WHITEHEAD
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health and Policy, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom emails [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
ASHLEY MCALLISTER
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden email [email protected]
BENJAMIN BARR
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health and Policy, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom emails [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

The debate about extending working lives in response to population ageing often overlooks the lack of employment opportunity for older adults with disabilities. Without work, their living standards depend heavily on government transfers. This study contributes to the literature on health inequalities by analysing the sources of income and poverty outcomes for people aged 50 to 64 in two liberal democratic countries yet with contrasting disability benefit contexts – Canada and the United Kingdom. This choice of countries offers the opportunity to assess whether the design of benefit systems has led the most disadvantaged groups to fare differently between countries. Overall, disabled older persons without work faced a markedly higher risk of poverty in Canada than in the UK. Public transfers played a much greater role in the UK, accounting for two-thirds of household income among low-educated groups, compared with one-third in Canada. The average benefit amount received was similar in both countries, but the coverage of disabled people was much lower in Canada than in the UK, leading to a high poverty risk among disabled people out of work. Our findings highlight the importance of income support systems in preventing the widening of the poverty-disability gap at older ages.

Keywords

povertywelfarehealth inequalitiesolder workerscomparative studiesI14I32J14N30
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 792 - 812
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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