Disability Pays | Power Line

From London’s Telegraph: “A quarter of Britons now disabled.”

A quarter of Britons are now disabled, with two million more people than before the pandemic saying they struggle to function because of poor mental health.
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Both sides are likely to point to findings from an official survey, released on Thursday, that showed 16.8 million people in the UK now say they have a disability. The number has risen by 40 per cent in the past decade and 700,000 in the past year.

For the first time, 25 per cent of people say they have a disability that has “substantial” and “long-term” effects on their ability to function in daily life. The rise is sharpest among those of working age, with 24 per cent in this cohort saying they have a disability, up from 19 per cent pre-Covid and 16 per cent a decade ago.

There are now more than ten million people of working age reporting a disability, including about a million under 25. This is addition to 1.2 million children under 15 reporting a disability.

It all adds up to one-quarter of the population claiming to be disabled. What is going on? With many fewer jobs requiring much physical effort or likely to result in injury, one might expect the percentage of disabled people to fall. But more people are claiming to be physically disabled, while the fastest increase is in mental health.

Mental illness is cited by 48 per cent of working age people with a disability, up from up from 39 per cent in 2018, making it the single biggest problem.

People today must be less resourceful, less resilient, and above all less motivated than people in the past. And, of course, you get what you pay for, and the Brits are paying for disability. Incentives matter.

The Labour government is trying to make program cuts, but costs will continue to rise:

Even after the latest cuts, spending on disability benefits will rise from £36 billion last year to £59 billion by the end of the decade.

Nevertheless, Labour MPs are in revolt, denouncing the proposed cuts as not sufficiently compassionate. They point out that in many families, the cuts would bite twice:

The government also faces discontent from more than 150,000 people who will lose their carer’s allowance as a result of the person they look after no longer qualifying for personal independence payments under the reforms. Official impact assessments show this will save £500 million.

So you can be paid twice; once for the disabled person, likely on mental health grounds, and again for a spouse or other family member who cares for the allegedly disabled person.

Some years ago, I read a news story about disability rates in Scandinavian countries. The numbers were striking: one country (I don’t remember which, but Denmark, say) had twice as many disabled residents as another country (say, Norway). That seems odd: are Danes so much more fragile than Norwegians? Of course not. The difference lay in the disability standards and benefits available in the two countries.

The United States is not quite as far down the path of civilizational decline as Great Britain, but here, too, growing numbers of people see no downside in claiming to be disabled, particularly on grounds of mental health. And of course, the government agencies that are supposed to help disabled people are always glad to have more clients and bigger budgets. I am not sure where the downward spiral ends.