‘It's the kids that suffer’: Exploring how the UK's benefit cap and two-child limit harm children

ANDERSEN, Kate, REDMAN, Jamie, STEWART, Kitty and PATRICK, Ruth (2024). ‘It's the kids that suffer’: Exploring how the UK's benefit cap and two-child limit harm children. Social Policy and Administration: an international journal of policy and research.

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Abstract

The benefit cap and the two-child limit reduce entitlement for households claiming means-tested benefits and disproportionately affect households with dependent children. This article explores the harms the policies are doing to children through drawing upon data collected from interviews with parents affected by the benefit cap and the two-child limit. To investigate the impacts of these policies we draw on the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, models principally developed by quantitative scholars seeking to understand how economic disadvantage adversely affects children over the longer-term. While there has been frequent quantitative analysis of these models, there has been very little qualitative engagement with them: this article directly addresses this gap in the literature. We show that the benefit cap and the two-child limit cause multiple and severe overlapping harms to children, principally by exacerbating and deepening financial economic disadvantage. Our research evidence illuminates causal processes underpinning both the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, but also reveals additional harms that are not foregrounded by either model. We conclude by calling for the removal of both policies as a vital first step in reducing child poverty, and further reflect on the need for greater recognition of the harm child poverty does to experiences of childhood; as well as to their future selves.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1605 Policy and Administration; 1606 Political Science; 1608 Sociology; Political Science & Public Administration; 4407 Policy and administration; 4409 Social work; 4410 Sociology
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.13034
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	03 May 2024 11:42
Last Modified:	03 May 2024 11:45
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33663

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