Ben Baumberg Geiger

WelfareExperiences (2024-28)

WelfareExperiences is a major project that seeks to compare the experiences of claiming benefits in 5 different countries, and is one of the first international comparisons of these experiences. The project was awarded by the European Research Council and is funded by the UK Government's Brexit-related guarantee scheme. It's an ambitious, mixed-methods, coproduced project - you can find out more about at the WelfareExperienecs website.

Welfare at a (Social) Distance (2020-23)

'Welfare at a (Social) Distance' was a rapid reponse project on the benefits system during Covid-19, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to COVID-19. (A further part on non-take-up and ineligibility was funded by the Health Foundatio).

The first report came out on 26th June 2020, and was followed by a number of reports on food insecurity, crisis support, non-take-up (inc.unsuccessful claims and ineligibility) and other things (see the project website). These are being followed by academic papers, including on welfare attitudes & solidarity, local ecosystems of support, and with 3 papers to follow in 2025 (on deservingness, conditionality, and mental health).

We're keen for people to re-use the qualitative and quantative data in the project - so you can find the 3 waves of the (longitudinal) claimant survey, 3 waves of general public comparisons, and information on obtaining the qualitative transcripts from the UK Data Service. Please do just drop me an email if you need advice on re-using it!)

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This project was funded by the charity Elizabeth Finn Care, who run the advice line / website Turn2us. The project wasn’t that big, but despite this we’ve squeezed in a new survey, an unusually deep media analysis, analysis of existing data, and a few focus groups. An academic paper about the survey was published in the Journal of Social Policy (Baumberg 2016).

Aside from our one-page summary in the report itself, you can also read short blogs on several different bits of the report — we’ve written on perceived fraud in the benefits system (on Inequalities), the role of the media on the New Statesman blog, and a longer version here, and how benefits stigma is misunderstood (on LSE Politics & Policy). Other people have written about the report in the Guardian (including on their Datablog), and the TUC’s Touchstone blog (also reposted on Liberal Conspiracy).

One part of this that some people seemed to have found useful is our ‘mythbusting’ briefing (mainly a fantastic job by Declan), building on our earlier version for Red Pepper (version with footnotes). Later on, I reflected on issues around the idea of benefit myths in three publications - see under 'Public attitudes' below.

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Attitudes to disability benefit claimants

Very little has previously been written on this, but I now have two published papers on this: Suspicious Minds? Media effects on the perception of disability benefit claimants in Journal of Social Policy, and Disabled but Not Deserving? The perceived deservingness of disability welfare benefit claimants in Journal of European Social Policy.

Trends over time

I was asked to write the chapters on benefits attitudes in the 2022, 2017 and 2014 British Social Attitudes reports, The rise and fall of anti-welfare attitudes across four decades: politics, pensioners and poverty, Tax avoidance and benefit manipulation: Views on its morality and prevalence and Benefits and the cost of living: Pressures on the cost of living and attitudes to benefit claiming.

Whether we can say that people hold ‘myths’ about the benefits system

There are three parts to this. Firstly, a paper looking at how far the public really do hold myths about the benefits system, published in Social Policy & Administration. Secondly, a book chapter looking at how far ‘benefit myths’ are associated with more negative aspects of the benefits system. And third, I think about what this all means for policy in a paper in the Journal of Poverty & Social Justice. See the publications page for links to appendices, free versions etc.

What policymakers can do in a climate of negative public opinion

Aside from the final paper in the benefit myths project, I have an older paper in the Journal of Poverty & Social Justice, much of which I think still holds today.

A variety of other blog posts

See my posts at the Inequalities blog under the keywords public opinion, political attitudes, and the politics of inequality.

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