Income Related Benefits: Estimates of Take-up - Financial Year 2016/17

Product Description

This report provides estimates of the take-up for some of the main income-related benefits in Great Britain for the financial year 2016/17: Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Income Support/Income-related Employment and Support Allowance.

Take-up refers to the receipt of benefits someone is entitled to. There are some people who are entitled to benefits but not receiving them.

Take-up of benefits can be affected by a number of factors. Trying to explain the reasons for non-take-up is difficult and we do not have the data in our modelling to do this. But it is useful to outline some of the broad factors that have been found to have an effect to help put the results included here into context. Take-up may be affected by factors such as the attractiveness of the benefit, lack of awareness of the benefit or application procedure, lack of awareness of entitlement, the perceived stigma of receiving a benefit or other factors (Eurofound 2015, see page 11 of this document for the links).