Cuts to benefit entitlements make it less likely unemployed people will find a job, a government-backed employment project has found, undermining politicians’ claims that docking welfare payments acts as an incentive to work. A quarter of participants in the Oxford project faced benefit cap losses of more than £200 a month. Approximately 146 participants were subject to the benefit cap during the year. “Conventional wisdom suggests that taking money off benefit claimants (eg by sanctions or cutting benefit rates) acts as a financial incentive to get a job. Our analysis says that the opposite is in fact true, at least for this project cohort,” the project evaluation report says.

Source: The Guardian June 05, 2016 13:52 UTC