(or To help understand adolescents’ mental health, look (also) at the benefit system)
In the run-up to the 2010 UK general election, David Cameron declared that “what matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting”. Despite committing to “give children the best chance in life”, Tory-led governments slashed benefit programs over the following years, with the poorest tenth among families with children losing up to 20% of their net household income. Assessing how these policy reforms affected around 10,000 children interviewed with their caregivers, new research based on the Understanding Society study suggests that these cutbacks led to a decline in levels of mental health for adolescents and their mothers – without much influence on ‘parental warmth’.
On foot of these changes there are now numerous reports of increased ill-health among children in the UK. Most recently, work by the Resolution Foundation has shown that the number of under-16s in receipt of Disability Living Allowance has doubled in England and Wales since 2013. These trends are all the more worrying considering the cuts to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in the same period, previously addressed in this blog.
The Understanding Society research adds that, compared to those relatively spared by austerity policies, adolescents in families hit by reforms like the Benefit Cap and the ‘bedroom tax’ began reporting worse social and emotional well-being, a key aspect of mental health which can also shape lifetime opportunities in school or the labour market. Children in households with lower incomes bore the brunt of cutbacks, with impacts being felt even years after the policy change, and health disparities deepening as a result.
Yet it is common for politicians and much of the media to cast the blame for children’s woes on what parents ‘do or don’t’. Attention is often selectively and disproportionately aimed at families on a low income who navigate the tax-benefit system (as most people do, in fact, at one point or another). Striking a somewhat different note, academics in the social and developmental sciences highlight how ‘family stress’ starts with economic hardship. In families with children, material deprivation and worries can impinge on the mental health of parents and caregivers. Accordingly, the study finds that mothers with lower incomes, and single mothers in particular, reported the most notable upticks in financial concerns and downswings in mental health, when targeted by cutbacks.
Where ‘family stress’ scholars meet media pundits halfway, even if inadvertently, is by suggesting that, when living on a low income, parenting might become less ‘warm’, harsher or more inconsistent. The study finds little evidence of such changes in the aftermath of cutbacks, and there is generally little support for the extreme but frequent claim that “poor parents are poor parents”. Rather, children themselves can be perceptive of financial turmoil, as it affects their own needs and wants, might require them to take more active and adult roles within the household (as carers, for example), and might lead to unfavourable comparisons with peers in school. ‘Blaming’ parents at best misses these processes, and can be damaging for parents and children both.
One counterpoint is that cutbacks could push parents to spend more time in paid work, and thereby ease financial concerns and related stress for everyone in the household. This proposition is at the core of Labour’s current agenda, while we wait for the recommendations of the ‘child poverty taskforce’ that has been set up. For parents of pre-school children, however, barriers such as the availability and affordability of childcare often mean that taking on more paid work is challenging. Among parents of adolescents in the study, especially (single) mothers on lower incomes, longer work hours did not generate earnings comparable to the benefit income lost to cutbacks, speaking to the importance of persistent structural problems like low pay and the gender earnings gap. Besides, other research has shown that benefit cutbacks can temper the financial and health gains of otherwise welcome changes on the employment front, such as the progressive uprating of the National Living Wage.
Taken together, these findings bolster the warning that “austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects”, issued by the updated Marmot Review just as the pandemic and cost of living crisis approached back in 2020. After witnessing cutbacks during austerity, those on the ‘legacy’ system were not entitled to the temporary uplift to Universal Credit experienced by some households at the height of the pandemic. Nonetheless, in 2024, as Universal Credit inherits austerity-era cutbacks, income support for most families remains less generous than it was under the legacy system ten years ago. Some, like couples renting and in paid work, stand to ‘win’ from the transition to Universal Credit, while others like non-renting single parents working more than 16 hours per week, or those with ill-health or a disability, confront the largest losses.
On top of tackling Universal Credit’s own bottlenecks and counterproductive features, abolishing policies like the Benefit Cap (as well as the infamous “two-child limit”) seems a promising start not only to mitigate child poverty, but to help ensure that children live a happier childhood today, and have better and more equitable prospects growing up. As of time of writing, the current UK government has decided to keep the Benefit Cap and other austerity cuts in place, raising concerns for the ongoing health and wellbeing of the affected groups detailed in this blog.
About the author: Gabriele Mari is an Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Recently, he received an Understanding Society Fellowship (2022) grant for the project UNPAID – Uncovering Parenting and Income Dynamics. His research focuses on how recessions and (cutbacks to) social security affect young children and their caregivers.
Anxiety and Art: Uncertain Bodies
Dec 4, 2024
African women and girls will die from unsafe abortions thanks to Trump win
Nov 20, 2024
When are healthy volunteers considered to be at risk? Reflections on the 2024 Revisions to the Helsinki Declaration
Nov 6, 2024
Adolescents struggle with their mental health: blame austerity, not parents
Oct 31, 2024
Lived experience and social welfare policy
Oct 23, 2024
Adolescents struggle with their mental health: blame austerity, not parents
by Gabriele Mari Oct 31, 2024(or To help understand adolescents’ mental health, look (also) at the benefit system)
In the run-up to the 2010 UK general election, David Cameron declared that “what matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting”. Despite committing to “give children the best chance in life”, Tory-led governments slashed benefit programs over the following years, with the poorest tenth among families with children losing up to 20% of their net household income. Assessing how these policy reforms affected around 10,000 children interviewed with their caregivers, new research based on the Understanding Society study suggests that these cutbacks led to a decline in levels of mental health for adolescents and their mothers – without much influence on ‘parental warmth’.
On foot of these changes there are now numerous reports of increased ill-health among children in the UK. Most recently, work by the Resolution Foundation has shown that the number of under-16s in receipt of Disability Living Allowance has doubled in England and Wales since 2013. These trends are all the more worrying considering the cuts to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in the same period, previously addressed in this blog.
The Understanding Society research adds that, compared to those relatively spared by austerity policies, adolescents in families hit by reforms like the Benefit Cap and the ‘bedroom tax’ began reporting worse social and emotional well-being, a key aspect of mental health which can also shape lifetime opportunities in school or the labour market. Children in households with lower incomes bore the brunt of cutbacks, with impacts being felt even years after the policy change, and health disparities deepening as a result.
Yet it is common for politicians and much of the media to cast the blame for children’s woes on what parents ‘do or don’t’. Attention is often selectively and disproportionately aimed at families on a low income who navigate the tax-benefit system (as most people do, in fact, at one point or another). Striking a somewhat different note, academics in the social and developmental sciences highlight how ‘family stress’ starts with economic hardship. In families with children, material deprivation and worries can impinge on the mental health of parents and caregivers. Accordingly, the study finds that mothers with lower incomes, and single mothers in particular, reported the most notable upticks in financial concerns and downswings in mental health, when targeted by cutbacks.
Where ‘family stress’ scholars meet media pundits halfway, even if inadvertently, is by suggesting that, when living on a low income, parenting might become less ‘warm’, harsher or more inconsistent. The study finds little evidence of such changes in the aftermath of cutbacks, and there is generally little support for the extreme but frequent claim that “poor parents are poor parents”. Rather, children themselves can be perceptive of financial turmoil, as it affects their own needs and wants, might require them to take more active and adult roles within the household (as carers, for example), and might lead to unfavourable comparisons with peers in school. ‘Blaming’ parents at best misses these processes, and can be damaging for parents and children both.
One counterpoint is that cutbacks could push parents to spend more time in paid work, and thereby ease financial concerns and related stress for everyone in the household. This proposition is at the core of Labour’s current agenda, while we wait for the recommendations of the ‘child poverty taskforce’ that has been set up. For parents of pre-school children, however, barriers such as the availability and affordability of childcare often mean that taking on more paid work is challenging. Among parents of adolescents in the study, especially (single) mothers on lower incomes, longer work hours did not generate earnings comparable to the benefit income lost to cutbacks, speaking to the importance of persistent structural problems like low pay and the gender earnings gap. Besides, other research has shown that benefit cutbacks can temper the financial and health gains of otherwise welcome changes on the employment front, such as the progressive uprating of the National Living Wage.
Taken together, these findings bolster the warning that “austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects”, issued by the updated Marmot Review just as the pandemic and cost of living crisis approached back in 2020. After witnessing cutbacks during austerity, those on the ‘legacy’ system were not entitled to the temporary uplift to Universal Credit experienced by some households at the height of the pandemic. Nonetheless, in 2024, as Universal Credit inherits austerity-era cutbacks, income support for most families remains less generous than it was under the legacy system ten years ago. Some, like couples renting and in paid work, stand to ‘win’ from the transition to Universal Credit, while others like non-renting single parents working more than 16 hours per week, or those with ill-health or a disability, confront the largest losses.
On top of tackling Universal Credit’s own bottlenecks and counterproductive features, abolishing policies like the Benefit Cap (as well as the infamous “two-child limit”) seems a promising start not only to mitigate child poverty, but to help ensure that children live a happier childhood today, and have better and more equitable prospects growing up. As of time of writing, the current UK government has decided to keep the Benefit Cap and other austerity cuts in place, raising concerns for the ongoing health and wellbeing of the affected groups detailed in this blog.
About the author: Gabriele Mari is an Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Recently, he received an Understanding Society Fellowship (2022) grant for the project UNPAID – Uncovering Parenting and Income Dynamics. His research focuses on how recessions and (cutbacks to) social security affect young children and their caregivers.