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From Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance: social sorting, sickness and impairment, and social security
- Authors:
- GROVER Chris, PIGGOTT Linda
- Journal article citation:
- Policy Studies, 31(2), March 2010, pp.265-282.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
This commentary examines the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) as a replacement for the main income replacement benefit, Incapacity Benefit (IB), for sick and/or disabled people in Britain. The authors argue that the process of claiming ESA, a process that is dependent upon medicalised perceptions of capability to work and which is aimed at managing the perceived economic and social costs of sick and disabled people, is a means of sorting sick and/or disabled people into subgroups of claimants. The authors go on to discuss the implications of their observations with regard to explanations of the disadvantages that sick and/or disabled people face and their implications for the income of such people. The authors conclude that because the shift from IB to ESA is premised upon a number of mistaken assumptions (such as the majority of claimants abusing the system by overstating the effect of their sickness or disability), it represents a retrograde development for people who are sick and/or who have impairments, potentially leaving a lot more claimants financially impoverished than under the old IB system.