Revealed: Britain’s welfare ghettos

Rabbi Lionel Blue talks about a “moral long-sightedness” of politics – the ability to see problems thousands of miles away (in Africa) or a century away (climate change) but not the poverty in one’s own doorstep, right now. And little wonder: England is very poor at measuring just how bad things are for its poorest. For example, we know from local authority data that one in four of people are on benefits in Liverpool. But that’s an amalgam of rich and poor areas. The welfare ghettos – areas where entire streets are on incapacity benefit – have been obscured. Until now.
 
The Department of Work and Pensions has been for a while producing welfare data in so-called “Lower Super Output Areas” – zones of about a thousand working-age people within wards. Only now has the Office of National Statistics also produced corresponding population data. They kindly sent me a breakdown of this in working-age population, so I can produce the key ratio: share of working-age people on benefits.