Social Security Experience Panels - About Your Benefits and You: quantitative research findings

Overall experience of the current benefits system

Almost three in five (60 per cent) respondents rated their experience of the current benefits system as 'poor' or 'very poor'. 18 per cent rated their experience as 'good' or 'very good'. Table 6 provides a breakdown of how respondents rated their overall experience of the current benefits system.

Table 7: Overall experience of current benefits system (n=1,121)

Experience by age and gender

There was not a noteworthy difference between how men and women rated their experience overall. The number of responses from those who identify in another way was too low to report findings.

Older respondents (aged 60 or over) were less likely to rate their experience as 'poor' or 'very poor'. Over half (51 per cent) of those who told us they were over 60, and who rated their overall experience of the social security system, described their experience as 'poor' or 'very poor', compared to more than three in five (63 per cent) of those under the age of 60. Table 8 provides a breakdown of how respondents rated their overall experience of the current benefits system by age.

Table 8: Overall experience of current benefits system by age (n=1,101)*

* The number of responses from those aged 24 or under are too low to report

Experience by location

There was not a substantial difference between those who live in urban and rural population areas. The number of responses is not high enough to report by Local Authority area.

However, respondents from the most deprived areas were more likely to have had a poor experience than those in more affluent areas. 63 per cent of those living in the most deprived SIMD quintile described their experience of the current social security system as being 'poor' or 'very poor' compared to 51 per cent of those in the least deprived SIMD quintile. Table 9 describes how people rate their overall experience by their SIMD2016 quintile ranking (1= most deprived areas, 5 = least deprived areas).

Table 9: Overall experience of current benefits system by SIMD2016 quintile (n=1,144)

Experience by disability and long term health conditions

Those with a disability or long term health condition were more likely than those without to have had a poor experience. Those most likely to rate their experience as 'poor' or 'very poor' were people with a mental health condition (63 per cent), chronic pain (62 per cent), a physical disability (60 per cent) or another long term health condition (57 per cent). This compares with 23 per cent of people with no disability or long term health condition who say that their experience was 'poor' or 'very poor'. Table 10 illustrates how respondents rated their overall experience by disability or long term health condition.

Table 10: Overall experience of current benefits system by disability or long term health condition (n=1,132)

Experience by Additional Support Needs and caring responsibilities

There was not a noteable difference between people who said they have, and those who do not have an additional support need in how they rated their experience of the benefits system overall. There was also not a noteable difference between those who said they have, and those who said they don't have caring responsibilities.

Experience by benefit type

Table 11 shows the breakdown of how respondents rated the system by the type of benefit that they have experience of. It is important to note that many respondents have experience of multiple benefits, and their response relates to the system as a whole, not their experience of accessing that benefit only.

Table 11: Overall experience of the current benefits system by benefit type