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2.5.6 The impact of tax, tax credit and welfare benefit measures on families where
there is a disabled child or disabled adult
This section looks at whether children who are disabled or who have a disabled
sibling are affected differently by the reforms than children living in other families.
Table 2.4 shows that families with disabled children suffer slightly bigger average
losses than average in percentage terms. Depending on the definition of disability
used, the overall impact of tax, benefit and tax credit changes (excluding indirect
taxes, but including Universal Credit) is an average loss of between 3.6 and 4.7
percent, compared with an average loss of only 3.3 percent across families with
children as a whole.
The largest average losses are for families with a child who is registered as disabled
with their local authority, who are the most severely disabled children with their
families constituting just 2.6% of all families with children, who lose most from benefit
and tax credit changes and gain least from income tax and NICs cuts, since they are
less likely to have parents in full-time employment. (The effects on parents of
children with lesser levels of disability suggest that they are no less likely to be
employed full-time than other parents).
Table 2.4. Effects of tax-benefit reforms in percentage terms for families with at least
one disabled child, by disability definition
income
Disability definition
Benefits
Tax
credits
tax/
NICs UC TOTAL
Limiting disability -2.4% -2.8% 0.5% 0.8% -3.9%
Long-standing health condition -2.1% -2.9% 0.4% 0.9% -3.6%
FRS published disability definition -2.4% -3.0% 0.4% 1.0% -4.0%
DDA disability definition -2.2% -2.9% 0.4% 0.8% -3.9%
LA registered disabled -2.7% -3.1% 0.1% 0.9% -4.7%
All families with children (for
comparison) -1.7% -2.7% 0.3% 0.8% -3.3%
Average losses for families with disabled adults are larger than for families with no
disabled adult (and indeed larger than those for families with disabled children),
mainly because the cuts to their benefits and tax credits are greater. 42
42 See Background report, Table 3.5
Office of the Children’s Commissioner: Child Rights Impact Assessment of Budget Decisions
June 2013 34