There are people who make choices to live on benefits and not look for work, but the question is why? Not because life on benefits is easy and better- from what I see it is not at all. It's because they have few choices - single parents, poorly educated, 3rd generation unemployed, live in high unemployment areas like NE, poor health, no hope.
We just never change most of these things. I teach in a school in an area that has been deprived since the industrial revolution. Whatever has happened in the world, it has been an area of poor housing, poverty, low aspiration, poor health, low paid jobs or high unemployment.
Our children do very well and many go off to university but there is no decent housing, no one with any socia aspirations moves into the area and those who leave are replaced with people with similar deprived backgrounds.
Until the government does some social engineering - building better class private housing in the area, building the best schools in terms of facilities ( instead of two brand new ones in the wealthies bit of the county and leaving the two poorest and shabbiest where we are) , the balance will never change and there will be no belief in the locality that it can ever be different, nothing to change the balance and be examples and something to aim for.