To think there will be many more disabled adults in 20 years?

[Walkyrie]

I’m disabled myself, just to put that out there.

It just seems like the number of people with a disability, usually a psychiatric one, is going through the roof.

40% of disability benefit claimants are claiming for mental health related reasons. The number of anxious children and teens on here, and that I know in my own life and family, is really really high. So many schools refusers and kids in need of extra support, special school placements and so on. It seems there are a lot of unemployed young adults living at home who simply don’t have the mental acuity to get a job, live independently, have a life of their own.

3 children in my family are currently school refusing, one we only found out about today but it was not a surprise as she’s always been very anxious and has selective mutism.

My AIBU is, should we be doing something to prepare for what may be a very high number of adults not working in years to come? How will we sustain them all?

The conditions PIP classifies under psychiatric disorders are varied. It includes some diagnoses that are not mental health conditions, e.g. it includes ‘cognitive impairment due to stroke’, Down’s Syndrome, learning disability, and Rett syndrome. It also includes things like dementia. So their 40% statistic you mention in your OP is slightly misleading.

PIP doesn’t need a diagnosis. It is about function rather than diagnosis.

It’s quite clear what domestic factors have been the main drivers of our current economic woes, on top of recent geopolitical issues (Covid, then war in Ukraine/ Iran):

1. Brexit
2. Ageing demographic making demands it has not paid for
3. Decades of economic mismanagement with entirely foreseen structural problems not addressed and continued refusal to address them now.

Disability benefits are a very minor issue in comparison and, as I said, have not risen materially as a proportion of revenue over the decades. Workforce participation is now higher than in previous decades.

There’s no point stating you want an economic discussion @Walkyrieif you then refuse to engage with evidenced economic facts and claim the opposite to be the case.

It really is.

Not to mention the fact that sometimes, medical professionals can be wrong about what to expect.

I was told that if my son survived, he wouldn't be the same boy he was before. He is disabled but not to the extent they said he would be and he's also made progress in the 2 years since his illness which I was also told would be unlikely.

Burgeoning disability benefits are not a 'minor issue'.

From the OBR - Disability benefits spending was forecast to be approx £40 billion in Great Britain in 2023-24. They forecast disability spending to increase to £58.1 billion in 2028-29. That would represent around 4 per cent of total public spending, and 2 per cent of GDP.

Yes the ageing population and associated costs is a huge issue too.

Something needs to be done. We can't keep kicking the can down the road for a future generation to deal with.

People like to tell themselves (and people who have experienced things beyond their comprehension) they'd be able to simply cope their way out of horrible crises. I'm sorry you've experienced all those awful things 💐

Thank you

Well certain governments if they get it will strip people of disability benefits except for the worst conditions. So plans are afoot

Like I said (in addition to the obvious impact of geopolitical factors which are impacting most countries, but instead looking at the factors driving UK-specific economic problems over and above the effects or the international issues beyond UK control) the effect of disability benefits on the UK economy/ tax revenue is insignificant compared to the impact of Brexit; decades of economic mismanagement; our crumbling infrastructure; our dysfunctional tax system which is strangling any prospect of productivity and growth; our failed healthcare, education and pensions systems; and the fact that 50% of public spending is now going on retirees who are the wealthiest cohort in society but only 15% of the population which is clearly unsustainable, hence falling living standards for everyone else. Disability benefits are a minor issue and certainly not even in the top 10 causes of our economic problems in the UK.

It’s a tiresome distraction/ obsession with some people and demonstrates either a lack of economic knowledge or a desperate attempt to try to deflect blame and find vulnerable scapegoats. If ALL disability benefits miraculously were not required anymore overnight it would make barely any difference at all to the UK’s economic situation or growth projections. The small rise in recent years (unsurprising following a global pandemic and with failing education and healthcare systems) is a rounding error in comparison to the multiple structural problems with the UK economy as outlined above which are the drivers of low growth, poor productivity, and the resulting ongoing decline in GDP per capita (when it is still rising in what used to be our comparator countries).

This will not change until education, healthcare, pensions, social care, our industrial policy and tax system are fundamentally reformed in the ways I have outlined to redirect a significant proportion of public spending towards investment in infrastructure and education etc, which will raise productivity. Until and unless that happens living standards will continue to decline. It’s that simple. Economists know this because we study the real-world effects of various types of policies when implemented in various countries across the world. The data does not lie.

Yes, it does.

A good first step would be implementing a state pensions system like that in Australia.

And a healthcare system similar to that in France.

Then we’ll have the money we need for education, defence, infrastructure etc and productivity and living standards will have a hope of rising rather than falling for the first time in over two decades.

Disabilities/ disability benefits are a distraction, a red herring, an imaginary squirrel that is fairly irrelevant to the problem and - while far from a perfect system of course - obsessing about this does not will not do anything if significance to improve the economic prospects of the UK or provide a route to rising living standards or prosperity. The issues that need to be addressed are crystal clear. It’s a shame we have no political party willing or capable of even discussing the obvious solutions let alone implementing them, and an electorate so ill-informed that it doesn’t demand a Government who will do so.

It's either simply ignorant or it is wilfully ignorant to assert that the benefits bill - including disability benefits which are a huge part, isn't a major problem.

As the TBI states 'the UK benefits bill is widely considered a major fiscal problem in 2026, projected to exceed £400 billion annually by the end of the decade. Total welfare spending has surpassed income tax revenue and exceeds the budget for health, education, or defence. Rising sickness benefits, with 8.4 million people receiving payments, are driving this "unsustainable" increase.'

The unsustainable increase in welfare has been driven by:

1. the exponential rise in state pension welfare which is already on its own (not even including pension credit and housing benefit and attendance allowance and the enormous social care expense) approaching 50% of the total welfare budget. I don’t think many people understand maths: not only do we have an ageing population and below-replacement birth rate but the triple lock - even with a stable age demographic - means that it is a mathematical certainty that the state pension expense will eventually exceed the TOTAL amount of tax revenue collected in the UK unless it is rescinded, and yet there are still people who support this measure remaining in place. It is literally mathematically impossible for it to continue forever without bankrupting the country.

2. Rising retirement ages meaning that the age cohort with the largest increase in disability benefit claims are those who are in their 50s and 60s and have developed health issues but haven’t saved enough money to retire so are making disability welfare claims until they reach the age where they will receive state pension welfare instead;

3. The expected rise in ill health given the global pandemic and the fact that the UK has one of the worst healthcare systems of any developed country with some of the very poorest care and medical outcomes for patients.

The rise in the welfare expense is primarily because of the disproportionate amount of spending on pensioners and the fact that even those who have far more income than the average UK full time salary still think they are “entitled” to welfare they do not need and didn’t - as a cohort - pay anywhere near enough tax to fund. The rising welfare cost is a symptom (not the cause) of the other economic problems that I identified in my earlier posts. We need to address the causes if we want rising living standards. Blaming disabled people/ cutting disability benefits further would just cause higher taxpayer costs later (justice, health, housing, lost productivity and tax revenue, etc).

I think these kinds of threads show very clearly why economics should be part of the national curriculum. It’s depressing how few adults seem to have a grasp of even the most basic and fundamental principles of economics and make all kinds of assertions without even having looked at the data and seem incapable of understanding the relative magnitude of various different public expenses even when this is pointed out to them, often trying instead to extrapolate their personal experiences or opinions or prejudices to the country as a whole as if this is a substitute for statistically validated data and comparison to statistically validated data from other countries (i.e. actual evidence).

If you ask people to "volunteer" to do something and pay them to do it, isn't that a paid job?

Many people with disabilities would be able to work if employers were more reasonable. Clearly you can't do a driving job if you are medically unable to drive, but you can work in an office. And if you have a condition which means you can't travel to an office, you can work at home.

Of course, there aren't enough jobs full stop currently. Although it does make you wonder why we have so many immigrants if we don't have the jobs. OK British people might not want to work as carers (I wouldn't) but do we really need immigrants to do things like (wo)man the barriers at railway stations or be postpeople when we have so many youngsters looking for a job?

I guess some of the problem is that’s too onerous to make your own success.
I see ND kids that have great skills but the it’s so difficult to make these into a workable venture due to all the rules and legislation. The easy start ups in the 80’s and 90’s have gone.

Theres no easy way to get tax/ start up help these days. We used to have banks and careers help centres even my small town if you wanted to set up something. It’s incredibly hard to get through realms of contradicty info online l

Oh dear you just keep saying the same thing again and again. Obviously there are reasons why the benefits bill is too big and growing, no one is saying it's the only issue. But I'll stop discussing it with you because you're clearly myopic on the issue.

Before I go - surprisingly (not surprisingly) your claim that the UK has 'one of the worst health care systems of any developed country', is incorrect. In fact the UK was recently ranked 4th out of 11 'developed countries' health care systems. Used to be first of course, but what with the over population the NHS is suffering. At least 10-15 million immigrants in 20 years - has an effect.

Wrong again.

The chart below displays the Health Care Index scores for 2025 across major OECD countries, which measure healthcare quality, infrastructure, and availability.

And in light of this, anybody who is surprised that claims for disability are rising (given the substandard medical care, lack of preventative treatment, and huge delays for any kind of treatment at all) is rather hard of thinking.

The obvious solution is to raise growth so that we have a growing “cake” and people can contribute more tax without their living standards falling further, increasing social division while society and infrastructure crumbles. Fighting over the remaining mouldy cake crumbs and trying to divide them into portions will not solve anything.

The only way to raise growth and therefore raise living standards sustainbly rather than “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, the only way to increase tax revenue and funding for necessary services without strangling the economy further and creating the opposite effect, is to raise productivity.

The only way to raise productivity is by ensuring that a sufficient proportion of public expenditure is spent on productive parts of the economy that will generate increased future revenue - i.e. a huge investment in education, plus much more spending on infrastructure, a proper industrial strategy developing the high-productivity areas where the UK has knowledge bases and strategic advantages such as engineering, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, finance, the arts etc. - and to rebalance the tax system to remove the cliff edges that create perverse disincentives to work at multiple levels of earnings (significantly lower the universal credit taper rate, make child benefit universal again, make the personal allowance universal again, make childcare funding universal again, levy tax on a household unit basis like pretty much every other developed country rather than the absurd and distorted system that we have now: robust economic studies show that these measures would actually increase tax revenue by removing the perverse disincentives that currently exist). Oh, and not obstructing trade with the largest trading block right on our doorstep.

This is all blatantly obvious to anybody with a sub-GCSE level grasp of economics, yet isn’t being done, and we appear to have a large part of the electorate who claim they are unhappy with their declining living standards yet continue to deny the very obvious reasons that this is happening and continually vote for politicians who produce manifestos setting out policies which will accelerate the decline and instead want to sit there getting poorer every year while raging against disabled people/ immigrants/ children with autism or ADHD/ <insert other economically illiterate and nasty hobbyhorse of your choice> when even if all of these people disappeared when the sun rose tomorrow their own prospects and living standards wouldn’t rise. The irony is that in fact they would likely fall.

I suppose there is some truth in the saying that people get the Government they deserve. It’s just sad that these UK voters, of which there are a depressingly high proportion, are dragging the rest of us down with them. Our only hope is that they stop before we all drown but it’s not looking likely based on political polling and the idiotic comments on this thread and many other like it.

So yes, @Northermcharn (ironic username) I do keep saying the same thing. That’s because that “thing” is what is clearly evidenced by indisputable data from many countries over decades, which some people seems determined to ignore, for reasons unfathomable to me as somebody rational.

This may be overthinking things a little but could the current uptick in anti welfare rhetoric be a bit of a "slight of hand" by business and government who know over the next two/three decades a lot of jobs will be replaced by AI and that it will take a while for new jobs to appear and for people to train for them?

Can't help feeling that it's awfully easy and convenient to rile up low income and middle class taxpayers to support removing and restricting welfare so that when those job losses do come the government doesn't have to put it's hand in its pocket to support them and ironically it got the people who ended up needing it to do all the work for them and can simply say "you voted for it" and hide behind "democracy".

Sorry that's a little too conspiratorial and I don't think it's entirely the case but I'm pretty sure a tiny grain of truth does exist in the above.

It also feels ass backwards that the message around disabled claimants always centers around the idea they are feckless workshy liars gaming the system which is hardly the impression you want to give to employers if you want these people working. I'm pretty sure dishonest and lazy are not qualities employers are looking for...

No I don't have any grand solution before someone asks I'm just a low level office worker trying to get by but I can't shake the feeling we're being played.

But how do we spend less on the elderly @29000seconds ? We've already forced those with savings to pay for their own care home fees which are astronomical and wipe people out financially in many cases. We can't deny them healthcare on account of their age and it seems just as unethical to means test the state pension, meaning some are penalised for having been prudent over the years, creating disincentives for future generations to save.

I wonder about this myself. A far greater proportion of the population may be in need of welfare in the coming decades and many will be the "strivers" of today - people who worked hard and achieved academically and consequently expected a lifetime of decent earnings, only to find out that they too will be expected to live on £400 a month and called scroungers for the privilege. It's very hard to see how it's all going to play out and I hope we don't see this outcome but mass unemployment, even of those with great ability and skill is obviously far from unlikely.

Absolute nonsense! Stop watching Netflix documentaries and YouTube tripe! AI can barely write a letter without making mistakes it's not taking jobs anytime soon and this sort of fantasy thinking is why the country is in a mess!

Also a large number of disabled claimants are gaming the system we have threads on here daily proving it and if employers have a bad impression of them that's their fault not mine as a taxpayer.

The country is broke and something has to be done like or not we cannot continue as we are!

Of course it's already taking jobs - this has been widely reported by reputable news sources such as the BBC and Channel 4 as well as by the government itself via departments such as the ONS (Office for National Statistics). This is only going to accelerate over the coming years.

This is the first generation brought up with phones and social media. They’ve also had Covid to deal with.

I agree their MH is awful and they’ll never have normal healthy lives.

So sad.