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(253) The income and employment of households in receipt of Income Support

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1240/5/1(253)

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SECURITY BY THE DEPUTY G.P. SOUTHERN OF ST. HELIER

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 2ND MAY 2017

Question

Given the data comparison provided in answer to Written Question 184 between Table 7 of Social Security Department: Income Support 2011' (R.126/2012) and the figures given in Table 31 of Social Security Department: Minister's Report 2015' (R.104/2016), will the Minister provide a breakdown of the sources of income (such as earnings, maintenance, Long-Term Incapacity Allowance) included as "average other income" for adults with children in these tables?

Will the Minister further advise, in relation to the Income Support claims from families with children shown in Table 33 of R.104/2016, in how many of those claims did the claimants involved have earnings from full-time, part-time and zero-hour jobs; and will she indicate whether the proportion of claimants with zero- hour jobs in this group differs from that proportion for the workforce as a whole?

Answer

For the benefit of Members, extracts from the two reports referenced in the first question are provided below.

Table 7 – R.126/2012

Table 7 indicates the average weekly income received from Income Support and from other sources for each of the household types at the end of 2011.

 

Household Type  

Income Support Benefit  

£  

Other Income  £  

Total Household Income  

£  

65+

158

202

360

Adult/s without Children

166

130

296

Adults with Child/ren

288

385

673

Single Adult with Child/ren

333

177

510

All Claims  

208

193

401

Table 31 – R.106/2016

Table 31 indicates the average weekly income received from Income Support and from other sources for each of the household types at the end of 2015, as well as the percentages of the Income Support households that are wholly reliant on Income Support.

 

Household Type

Average Income Support Benefit £

Average Other Income £

Average Total Income £

Percentage of Households

 wholly reliant on Income Support

65+

£176

£223

£399

1%

Adult/s without children

£187

£161

£348

25%

Adults with child/ren

£279

£467

£746

2%

Single adult with child/ren

£353

£232

£585

14%

Total

£227

£238

£465

13%

Table 11: Total average (mean) weekly income based on claims as at 31 December 2015

Q.1: will the Minister provide a breakdown of the sources of income (such as earnings, maintenance, Long- Term Incapacity Allowance) included as "average other income" for adults with children in these tables?

The analysis of "average other income" in the tables above is shown in the table below for adults with children.

 

Type of income

2011

2015

Average earnings

£ 335

£425

Average maintenance income

£ 11

£7

Average pension income

£ 2

£1

Average other income, including contributory benefits*

£ 37

£34

 

Total average other income'

£385

£467

* Income in this row includes rental income, insurance payments, benefits from other countries and charitable income, as well as Social Security contributory benefits.

Income from savings and investments (bank interest etc.) is not included in this table and this type of income is not included in the Income Support calculation. Charitable income is recorded but is then wholly disregarded from the Income Support calculation.

Q.2: Will the Minister further advise, in relation to the Income Support claims from families with children shown in Table 33 of R.104/2016, in how many of those claims did the claimants involved have earnings from full-time, part-time and zero-hour jobs; and will she indicate whether the proportion of claimants with zero-hour jobs in this group differs from that proportion for the workforce as a whole?

Table 33 shows the distribution of adults with earnings amongst all claims consisting entirely of working age adults as at 31/12/2015.

 

Working Age Household Type

No. of Claims with no Adult with Earnings

No. of Claims with at least one Adult with Earnings

Total No. of Claims

% of

Households with no Adult with Earned Income

Adult/s without children

1,615

772

2,387

68%

Adults with child/ren

107

842

949

11%

Single adult with child/ren

450

632

1,082

42%

Table 33: Working age adults with and without earnings as at 31 December 2015

Detailed information on the type of employment contract held by individual claimants is only recorded at the level of the individual record. It is not possible to use Income Support data to make a comparison between the proportion of Income Support claimants with a zero-hour job and the proportion for the workforce as a whole.