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Disability benefits for older people: how does the UK attendance allowance system really work?
- Author:
- PUDNEY Steve
- Publisher:
- University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 32p., bibliog.
- Place of publication:
- Colchester
Attendance Allowance is a system of cash benefits available, in principle, to everyone over the age of 65 with substantial care needs arising from physical or mental impairment. Recommendations for the diversion of resources from cash benefits have been made in the Wanless report and the government Green Paper on social care. This report argues that, before a decision can be made on the future of Attendance Allowance, it is important to understand how the system works in terms of its actual delivery of benefit to people, rather than its stated rules and aims. This report uses data from the UK Family Resources Survey for the 3 years 2002/3 – 2004/5 to analyse data on the relationship between disability and receipt of the Attendance Allowance disability benefit by older people. Despite being non-means-tested, the findings show that Attendance Allowance is implicitly income-targeted and strongly targeted on those with care needs. The analysis focuses particularly on the receipt of higher-rate benefit, intended for those in need of day-and-night care. Although the rules would suggest that the odds of receiving higher-rate payment would depend only on the extent of care needs, the findings showed that, in practice, higher-rate payments are significantly negatively related to age and income. The allocation of higher-rate Attendance Allowance awards also strongly favours people with physical rather than cognitive disabilities.