Working for a Living: Employment, Benefits and the Living Standards of Disabled People

153 Pages·2000·0.56 MB·English

by  Helen Barnes

WORKING FOR A LIVING?
Employment, benefits and the living
standards of disabled people
Helen Barnes
The•POLICY
P
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P R E S S
First published in Great Britain in October 2000 by
The Policy Press
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Contents
Acknowledgements iv
Introduction v
one Disability policies and the citizenship rights of 1
disabled people
two Disability and welfare state regimes 19
three Employment and working life 35
four Benefits, personal assistance and living standards 61
five Conclusion and policy implications 97
References 115
Appendix: Methods used for the research 137
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Working for a living?
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of
York, which funded this research by means of a doctoral studentship,
and especially to John Ditch, my supervisor. Thanks also to the University
of North London for funding work on the manuscript. Many
organisations and individuals provided information, and I am grateful
to them all, especially Susanne Berg, Sylve Hannson, Bjarne Almström
and Johan Sjögren. Most of all, thank you to my family and friends for
their support.
The BHPS data used were made available through the ESRC Data
Archive. The data were originally collected by the ESRC Centre on
Micro-Social Change at the University of Essex. Neither the original
collectors of the data nor the Archive bear any responsibility for the
analyses or interpretations presented here. The German data used are
from the public use version of the German Socio-Economic Panel.
These data were provided by the Deutsches Institut für
Wirtschaftsforschung. Robert Eriksen and Magnus Bygren at the
Swedish Institute for Social Research provided access to the Swedish
Level of Living Survey. Neither the Deutsches Institut für
Wirtschaftsforschung nor the Swedish Institute for Social Research bears
any responsibility for the analyses or interpretation of the data they
supplied.
I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments, and
to Dawn Rushen at The Policy Press for her patience and efficiency.
Any remaining errors or omissions are my sole responsibility.
iv
Introduction
This book is concerned with the extent to which social policies,
particularly labour market and social security policies, enable disabled
people to participate in the ordinary life of their communities. It will
argue that both the objectives and implementation of social policies
play a crucial role in securing, or failing to secure, the integration of
disabled people, by determining the level of income and material well-
being which can be attained, and by affecting access to, and levels of
autonomy within, valued social roles. These include not only
employment, but also personal relationships and a range of social and
political activities. Disability policies are compared across three countries,
Sweden, Germany and the UK, which have contrasting models of welfare
state provision, with a twofold aim: to compare the living standards
resulting from differing combinations of policy and to assess existing
welfare state typologies (such as those of Esping-Andersen, 1990; Castles,
1993) against an analysis of the situation of disabled people, in the same
way as has already been done using policies affecting women (Lewis,
1992; Shaver and Bradshaw, 1993; Sainsbury, 1994, 1996). The well-
being of disabled people is determined partly by access to the labour
market, and by cash benefits, but may also depend on both the level and
form of service provision, which is not fully taken into account in
many existing comparisons of welfare states (although there are
exceptions, including work by Alber [1995], Walker et al [1993] and
Anttonen and Sipilä [1996], which begin to assess the importance of
social service provision in comparing welfare states).
These issues are discussed in a context where welfare spending has
been severely curtailed by economic pressures, and where political
movements led by disabled people themselves have created a new impetus
for social policies in response to their needs, including a renewed focus
on the role of employment. If social policies are, as has been argued,
‘disabling’ in their effects (Barnes, 1991), to what extent is this inevitable,
or can policies be designed which respect the autonomy of disabled
people while continuing to meet other objectives, such as maintaining
work incentives and remaining within public spending limits?
The research is concerned with three specific questions:
• Whether or not disabled people have worse living standards than
non-disabled people in all three countries. Although material living
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standards are considered, using both income measures and non-
monetary indicators of deprivation, the concept of living standards
adopted is broader than this, and includes measures of satisfaction
with work and life, and levels of social and political activity. It is
concerned to identify the barriers which may prevent disabled people
enjoying the same living standards as their non-disabled peers,
recognising that in a physical and social environment which so often
excludes them, income alone may not guarantee the ability to
participate in society (Zarb and Oliver, 1993).
• How important paid work is for the well-being of disabled people,
and whether its importance is solely financial or has a broader impact
on the quality of life. Levels of part-time and full-time employment
among disabled and non-disabled men and women are compared,
and the benefits and rewards of work are examined, not only in
financial terms, but by comparing the quality of the work
environment, and levels of satisfaction with various aspects of work,
and by exploring the links between participation in paid employment
and participation in wider society, through social and political activity.
• Third, the research asks whether the disability policies adopted in
each country, and their outcomes for disabled people, are consistent
with existing classifications in welfare state typologies, or whether
they suggest modifications to their position, and therefore represent
a contribution to the literature on welfare state regimes.
Methods and countries
The countries selected were chosen as representative examples of
contrasting welfare regimes, in order to test whether an analysis based
on disability resulted in similar conclusions to classifications based on
other indicators such as aggregate welfare spending, indices of de-
commodification (Esping-Andersen, 1990) or the position of women
(Lewis, 1992; Shaver and Bradshaw, 1993; Sainsbury, 1994). A
combination of methods was used, in an attempt to obtain an
understanding of how the range of disability policies operates in each
country.
Documentary evidence from the three countries formed the basis of
the analysis of disability policies. This was supplemented by a series of
interviews for Sweden, and by discussion with national informants for
a related project on partial capacity benefits (Thornton et al, 1997) for
all countries. Typical situations were used as ‘vignettes’(Finch and Mason,
1993; Millar and Warman, 1996) to establish how policy responses to
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Introduction
disability vary with an individual’s age, their age at onset of disability,
work experience, family situation and personal care needs.
Outcomes for disabled people were also modelled using secondary
analysis of survey data. There was no suitable data set available for the
three countries, so three discrete surveys were used for the analysis; the
Swedish Level of Living Survey (ULF), the German Socio-Economic
Panel (GSOEP) and the British Household Panel (BHPS). All of these
surveys provide information on a range of economic and social factors
at both the individual and household level. Because of the nature of
the data used, it is not possible to provide entirely congruent cross-
national comparisons at the micro level; definitions of income,
employment, and so on vary between the three surveys used. The research
does, however, provide an analysis of the relative position of disabled
and non-disabled people in each country, and enables cross-national
comparisons of the outcomes for disabled people to be made at an
aggregate level.
Comparative research on disability issues is relatively sparse. There
have been studies which have looked at the economic effects of disability
benefits, particularly in terms of the ways they influence retirement
patterns (see, for instance, Kohli et al, 1991) and there has been much
recent interest in comparing employment policies (Lunt and Thornton,
1993; Thornton and Lunt, 1997) and related social security policies
(Thornton et al, 1997). There have also been some comparative studies
of social care provision (see, for instance, Munday, 1992; Evers et al,
1994; Ungerson, 1995). What all of these studies have in common is
that they are largely accounts of policy inputs at the macro level, and
discuss outcomes by reference to key trends in population behaviour.
By contrast, studies of outcomes based on micro-data, such as those
concerning income dynamics or the effects of transfers on households’
incomes (such as Smeeding et al, 1990; Mitchell, 1991), have tended to
exclude disabled people, largely because of the definitional problems
involved.
What has not so far been attempted is a study which assesses the
combined effects of the various programmes for disabled people,
compares these cross-nationally, and attempts to relate these to the living
standards of disabled people as revealed by an analysis of household
surveys. The research presented here represents such an attempt and has
both the strengths and limitations of an innovative approach to an
established issue. On the one hand, it provides new evidence about the
lives of disabled people in the three countries studied; on the other, it
bears witness to the methodological complexity of the task in being
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Working for a living?
unable to provide a refined level of comparability across all the issues
studied.
The time frame
The quantitative analysis is based on survey data from 1991; this was the
only year for which contemporaneous data from all three countries was
available, and the most recent for Sweden, which undertakes its panel
surveys only at infrequent intervals, rather than annually. Although this
is now some time ago, comparison with recent official statistics on the
labour market participation of disabled people in the three countries
does not appear to suggest that the broad findings are invalidated by the
passage of time; if anything the position of disabled people has become
rather worse, owing to the worsening economic climate in Europe as a
whole (Sly, 1996; Thornton and Lunt, 1997; Thornton et al, 1997).
However, as the description of disability policies is based on the most
recent information available, there is some mismatch between the
outcomes as revealed by the analysis, and the policies to which these
may be attributed, and this should be borne in mind when considering
the results. For instance, the data does not reflect the passage of anti-
discrimination legislation in Sweden and the UK, or take account of
recent changes in the provision and funding of personal assistance in
Sweden. However, the research overall seeks to bridge this gap by
describing typical outcomes taking into account both the implications
of recent policy developments and the results of the survey analysis.
viii
ONE
Disability policies and the citizenship
rights of disabled people
Introduction
The disability politics of the last 20 to 30 years have been described as
the last civil rights movement. Disabled people have rejected the
damaging stereotypes of passivity and dependency which have
underpinned so many forms of welfare provision in favour of new models
of independent living which emphasise personal autonomy. In common
with other groups, such as immigrants, women, and those who are poor
(Held, 1989; Lister, 1990; Roche, 1992), disabled people have argued
that a failure to guarantee their rights results in an imperfect, ‘second-
class’ citizenship (Barnes, 1991; Oliver, 1996). This poses a challenge to
policy makers, particularly those concerned with income maintenance,
employment and personal assistance, but recent political emphasis on
civil rights for disabled people has tended to overshadow debate about
how welfare provision can be reformed to fulfil the social citizenship
rights of disabled people and enable their equal participation in society.
The research presented in this book compares disability policies and
the standard of living experienced by disabled people in three countries:
Sweden, Germany and Britain. It considers their economic situation,
and investigates whether disabled people in each country are able to
lead the same kind of lives as their non-disabled peers in terms of access
to employment, income and social life. It identifies examples of good
practice, makes recommendations for changes to existing policy and
practice, and highlights areas where further research is required. This
first chapter begins by exploring the concepts of disability, citizenship
and independence, which will provide the framework for later analysis.
The ‘social model’ of disability
The way in which disability is defined influences both the way in which
disabled people construct their identities, and the way in which they
are perceived by others (Scott, 1969; Stone, 1984; Gartner and Joe, 1987).
1