What happened to people who left benefit system during the year 30 June 2016
In February 2017, Superu released the report Off-benefit transitions: Where do people go? which examined the characteristics of people who exited benefits and their outcomes over two years after exiting a benefit*.
MSD followed this work up with a new round of analysis, What happened to people who left benefit system during the year ended 30 June 2014, published in September 2018. This focussed on people exiting benefits following the 2012-13 Welfare Reforms to enable comparison to the pre-reform cohort examined in the Superu report.
This new analysis looks at outcomes for 131,000 people who stopped receiving a main benefit in 2015/2016 and had been off benefit for at least a calendar month.
The outcomes looked at over 18 months following an exit from the benefit system were:
- reasons for exit
- earnings following exit into employment
- sustainability of exit and, where relevant, earnings.
In addition, the latest work:
- compares outcomes with those of prior investigation periods
- Did the reasons that people exited a benefit change?
- Did what happen to people after exit change?
- Were there changes for different groups of people?
- looks at seasonal employment
- How did outcomes differ for people who exited benefit to employment in seasonal industries compared to non-seasonal industries?
- examines differences in types of training and education
- How did people’s outcomes differ by subject and qualification level?
- looks at the impact of mental health
- How did outcomes after exit differ for people who accessed mental health and addiction (MHA) services?
* Important note: The findings in the Superu report and MSD’s reports are not directly comparable. MSD has updated the methodology and data sources to provide a more refined picture of outcomes for people coming off and on a benefit and slightly widened the scope of people we looked at. To enable a comparison we have refreshed and updated data for the 2010-11 cohort of people leaving the benefit system and used this in our reporting. This is explained further in Appendix 1 of the main report.
