The unintended consequences of benefit sanctions

The Coalition's welfare reforms will step up the degree of conditionality and the use of sanctions on benefit claimants. The way Cameron and co portray these reforms, you would think they were the first government to have introduced conditions. This is an old trick. As those who have studied social policy will know, benefits have always been issued with certain stipulations. This was especially true of New Labour, who strengthened conditionality as part of their Third Way agenda.

Analysts have thus had a long time to assess the effects of benefit sanctions, and one interesting insight comes from a 2004 paper by UCL's Stephen Machin with Olivier Marie. In the article, Machin and Marie use quasiexperimental methodology to compare crime rates in in areas before and after the introduction of JSA, which at the time was seen as introducing a more punitive benefits regime.

Machin and Marie's results are quite fascinating. They found that in areas where there were more sanctions there was also a corresponding rise in crime. Thus, they argue that "benefit cuts and sanctions embodied in the JSA appear to have induced individuals previously on the margins to engage in crime".

The Coalition (and the whole political class in general) is widely convinced that there needs to be ever greater sanctioning in the benefits system. The argument for this is generally split in two: (a) the threat of sanctions is a matter of fairness (you get a benefit, we expect you to look for work); and (b) economic incentives will encourage people to find work.

While (a) is generally a moral issue, the evidence on (b) - as Machin and Marie show - is far from clear. We all want to see more people in work, but when we try achieving this by pushing people to the extremes of economic hardship, we might just find some very unintended - and some very undesired - consequences.

Did 'welfare dependency' cause England to riot?

In trying to explain last week's riots, one of the most popular explanations amongst people on the right is that they were caused by 'welfare dependency'. In other words, pockets of society have become so infected by a 'something for nothing', irresponsible welfare culture that it ultimately culminated in the mass looting across England last week. The solution is to reform welfare even more radically, so that a 'life on benefits' is an option for no-one.

There's a simple way to see if conservatives are correct about this. Notably, the riots only took place in England with no similar events occurring in Wales or Scotland. These were peculiarly English riots.

Thus, if 'welfare dependency' is really to blame, we would expect to see a clear statistical trend: higher levels of dependency in England, lower levels of dependency elsewhere. If we say that 'welfare dependency' (which is a crude term anyway) can be measured by the proportions of people in each region who are economically inactive and/or dependent upon out-of-work benefits, we can simply compare different regions. The welfare dependency thesis would lead us to predict that the affected regions would be the most economically inactive/benefit dependent.

Economic inactivity and benefit receipt by region

The graph above shows that there are no notable differences between the three affected regions (West Midlands, North West and London) and the two unaffected regions (Wales and Scotland). Indeed, out of all five regions, it is Wales which has the highest level of economic inactivity and the highest proportion of ESA/incapacity claimants.

The statistics just don't add up for people who think the welfare state is linked to the outbreaks of violence and looting this week. Not only do Wales and Scotland have extremely similar benefit caseloads as the rioting regions, they have a much stronger culture of welfare and social justice. Both countries are distinctly social democratic in comparison to conservative England, so the idea that either liberal criminal justice policy or social democratic welfare policy is to blame for the English riots looks to be unempirical nonsense. It is important that such arguments are heard before the Government takes its chance to cut the welfare state even further.

Inequality is a psychological - not material - problem

My post yesterday argued that one factor (and just one) behind this week's riots could be the high level of inequality we have in the UK, particularly in London (as several academic studies have shown).

A common response to theories of this kind is to hypothesise about the material lives of those guilty for the violence. Even before the looting, many poor, young people have the type of consumer goods - smartphones, HD televisions, designer clothes - which one does not usually associate with abject poverty. How can poverty and deprivation cause such anomic behaviour, when people possess the kind of goods that the poor could only dream of decades ago?

Krishnan Guru-Murthy expressed this point in his blog, arguing that: "If people riot because they can't afford the same consumer items as the rest of us then logic dictates that once they have got the trainers and televisions they crave the crime would stop".

Maybe, but only if you think inequality is a problem of material possession. On the other hand, if - as research such as this suggests - inequality is a psychosocial problem, then it will not make the blindest bit of difference what the rioters own and don't own.

The psychosocial thesis argues that the problem with inequality is the psychological and social stress caused by occupying a position of low status in society. When people are discernibly 'lower' than others in the social hierarchy, it induces all sorts of problems: ranging from stress and anxiety, to lack of trust and respect. When inequality is high - as it is in the UK - status differences are not only more visible within everyday social life, but also much wider and harder to break.

Status is a social phenomenon which is far more complex than what one owns and what one doesn't. The rioters might have plasma TVs, but they are still stuck on the bottom rung of society's ladder. And after this week, they'll be floating off into the gutter. Until we deal with our profound degree of status inequality, we will continue - to use our Prime Minister's words - to be a 'sick society'.

A tale of two cities

Not long has the dust settled on a third night of violence, with a deep worry for another one, that people begin the search for a cause behind the unprecedented and completely unpredictable riots which have engulfed London and other English cities. Early choruses of 'pure criminality' are being replaced by increasingly political and social explanations. Debates and arguments will surely rage for months.

While many on the political right have begun to lay the blame at the gates of the welfare state, I would like to put forward an alternative explanation, of chronically high levels of social inequality. In particular, inequality - of opportunity, income, status and so on - blights London. According to this article by the New Economics Foundation, London is one of the most unequal cities in the Western world.

The figures come from a book by Professor Danny Dorling, a geographer from Sheffield University. In relation to them, Dorling argues that London is so unequal it 'resembles an Indian caste system, where people only mix with those from their own income brackets'.

For those who have ever lived in London, such imagery should be familiar; it is a city where affluence and prosperity sit side-by-side with enormous poverty. So much so, that Londoners have become accustomed to living separate lives from others with whom they share the same living space. It has, de facto, become two separate cities who barely interact. This week, those two cities have clashed. It will haunt London for years to come.

The Norway tragedy and solidarity

Yesterday, the New Statesman blogger Dan Hodges wrote an article which criticised people on the left, particularly the author Owen Jones, for expressing 'solidarity' with the people murdered in the shocking attacks in Norway last Friday.

The root of Hodges' argument seems to be this. That it is has been wrong for people on the left to use their political beliefs as a way of connecting with the dead in Norway and, as a result, seemingly 'exceptionalising' the tragedy as one in which socialists and social democrats hold a particular empathy; distinct from what a conservative or liberal might be feeling, and distinct to what might have been felt had it been a different group of young political activists killed. Hodges believes expressions of solidarity to be a cynical attempt by left-wingers to 'appropriate' tragedy for themselves.

In fact, it seems more likely that the person guilty of cynicism is Hodges himself. The tragedy in Norway is a tragedy at numerous levels. For anyone with a basic sense of humanity, it is a crime of the most profound sadness. For the families involved, there is a grief that the vast majority of us will never understand. And for people on the left - for this was a deliberate attack on social democrats - there is the reality that people with whom we share a community with have been targeted so callously.

Hodges ignores (and sees as dangerous) how death imbues different emotions. Sympathy for the loss of a fellow human; grief for the loss of a loved one; and solidarity with those who we share a community with. He calls for his readers to put aside politics in the face of a tragedy, yet it is inescapable that Hodges seems to be making a deeply political point himself; about his distaste for what he perceives as the left-wing notion of 'solidarity'.

This is a deep error; solidarity is not a notion which belongs exclusively to the left. Solidarity belongs to all of us who exist as members of different groups and communities. To try to remove solidarity from the experience of tragedy is to remove something which is deeply ingrained within human social life. On September 11, Americans stood together in solidarity as members of a national community. After the Hillsborough disaster, the people of Liverpool were united as one city. And it is undoubted that Jewish people, wherever in the world, feel a solidarity with fellow Jews in the wake of a horror such as the Holocaust.

I doubt that Hodges would criticise the above examples of solidarity so readily as he does the left's reaction to the Norway tragedy. And I doubt he would so forthrightly disregard the solidarity which Norwegians are using to comfort one another at this very moment. Solidarity exists within a range of communities: the national, the local, the religious and (yes) the political. Dan Hodges' discomfort with the solidarity shown by the left perhaps says more about his own unease within this particular community than any noble wish to sympathise with those affected on Friday.

Have the Conservatives made a mistake in sidelining Blond's Red Toryism?

In the latest edition of Social Policy Review 23, Jay Wiggan writes a very interesting article on the social policy thinking behind Cameron's conservatism and its relationship to Phillip Blond's vision of Red Toryism (a copy of the working paper can be found here).

In the article, Wiggan argues that in most social policy areas - such as public service delivery, poverty alleviation and welfare reform - Cameron has by and large stuck to a neo-liberal, paternalistic strategy, much in the spirit of both Thatcherism and elements of New Labour. In doing so, Wiggan argues that Cameron has largely ignored the thesis of Red Toryism. The Red Tory thesis shares some elements of traditional conservatism (such as self-reliance, a distrust of the state and a concern with dependency and worklessness), yet is openly critical of the neo-liberal model, both in terms of its economic effects (which have produced even less market plurality) and harmful social consequences (such as the emphasis on individualism over wider claims of community and civic responsibility).

After reading Wiggan's analysis, I can't help but feel that the Conservatives have missed out by sidelining Blond's ideas, as opposed to putting them at the centre of their political strategy. In an age of mass distrust of both the state and the market, a thesis which offers a coherent critique of both would seem to offer the Tories the chance of genuinely moving beyond Thatcherism and into a new age. By rejecting this route, it is of little surprise that they continue to be tarnished with the nasty brush: as the party of individualism, privatisation and social ignorance.

Are more equal societies the most altruistic?

Ever since Richard Titmuss's landmark study on blood donation and social policy, the act of voluntarily donating blood has been held up as a rare example of true human altruism. In more recent times, advocates of more equal societies have argued that if we want more altruism - and thus a better and stronger society - we must also strive for more income inequality.

Some work I am completing at the moment is looking at this claim: that stronger, more cohesive societies are also more equal. One indicator I am examining is altruism, as measured by blood donation, and I thought I would share this finding on here.

The relationship between blood donation and income inequality (data available here)

The graph above shows a strong correlation (r=0.7) between income inequality (as measured by the 20:20 ratio) and blood donation (as measured as the % of the population who have donated blood). The relationship is also highly statistically significant (p=0.008), meaning there is little chance that what is observed is due to chance.

Of course, we should not take such evidence as the be all and end all in the equality debate; the above graph just shows a simple bivariate relationship. Nevertheless, such evidence seems to be adding up. It is about time politicians - particularly those on the Left - woke up to it.