Ben Baumberg Geiger

Research into disability, work and benefits

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This page lists my academic writing - peer-reviewed journal articles, followed by reports/book chapters, evidence submissions, and blog posts. (Nearly all the papers/reports are freely available below, but if you're struggling to get hold of anything then drop me an email). Separately, you can also find a list of presentations and of rejections and unpublished writing.

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PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS


Paper

Benefits Conditionality in the United Kingdom: Is It Common, and Is It Perceived to Be Reasonable? (Geiger, Scullion, Edmiston, de Vries, Summers, Ingold and Young in press). Social Policy & Administration.

Paper

Did increasing the UK’s Universal Credit and working tax credits by £20 per week in 2020–2021 reduce food insecurity? (Loopstra, Geiger & Reeves, in press). Journal of Social Policy.

Paper

Claiming deservingness: The durability of social security claimant discourses during the Covid-19 pandemic (Summers, Edmiston, Geiger, Ingold, Scullion, de Vries, & Young in press). The Sociological Review.

Paper

Employment Responses to a Partner’s Disability Onset (“Care Shocks”): Do Working Conditions Matter? (Beaufils, Geiger, & Glaser 2025). The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 80(4):gbae208.

Paper

Suspicious Minds? Media effects on the perception of disability benefit claimants (Geiger, 2025). Journal of Social Policy, 54(3):693-713.

Paper

Welfare attitudes in a crisis: How COVID exceptionalism undermined greater solidarity (de Vries, Geiger, et al, 2025). Journal of Social Policy, 54(3)714-733.

Paper

Personal independence payments among mental health service users: results from a novel data linkage (Stevelink, Bakolis, Dorrington, Downs, Leal, Madan, Phillips, Geiger, Hotopf, & Fear 2024). BJPsych Open 10(5):e150.

Paper

Universal Credit receipt among working-age patients who are accessing specialist mental health services: results from a novel data linkage study (Stevelink, Bakolis, Dorrington, Downs, Leal, Madan, Phillips, Geiger, Hotopf, & Fear 2024). Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 78:592-598.

Paper

Social class bias in welfare sanctioning judgements: Experimental evidence from a nationally representative sample (de Vries, Reeves, and Geiger 2022). Social Policy & Administration, 56(5), 843-858. Data and code are available via OSF.

Paper

Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security (Edmiston, Robertshaw, Young, Ingold, Gibbons, Summers, Scullion, Geiger, and de Vries, 2022). Social Policy & Administration 56(5):775–790.

Also available via the University of Salford repository, and connected to the Welfare at a (Social) Distance report below (which contains additional quantitative analyses), Navigating Pandemic Social Security: Benefits, Employment and Crisis Support during COVID-19.

Paper

Performing trustworthiness: The ‘credibility work’ of prominent sociologists (Geiger, 2021). Sociology 55(4):785–802

Paper

Disabled but Not Deserving? The perceived deservingness of disability welfare benefit claimants. (Geiger, 2021). Journal of European Social Policy 31(3):337–351

Paper

Beyond The Numbers: The Impact of Quantitative Teaching on Overall Student Performance (Eick, Larsen, Geiger, & Sundberg, 2021). Journal of Political Science Education, 17(S1):693-702.

Paper

Has working-age morbidity been declining? Changes over time in survey measures of general health, chronic diseases, symptoms and biomarkers in England 1994–2014 (Geiger 2020). BMJ Open 10:e032378

Paper

The growing American health penalty: International trends in the employment of older workers with poor health (Geiger, Böheim & Leoni 2019). Social Science Research, 82:18–32. An open-access version is available here, the appendices are available here, and the full replication code is available here

Paper

Assessing work disability for social security benefits: international models for the direct assessment of work capacity (Geiger, Garthwaite, Warren & Bambra 2018). Disability and Rehabilitation, 40(4):2962–2970

Paper

Benefit ‘Myths’? The Accuracy and Inaccuracy of Public Beliefs about the Benefits System (Geiger 2018). Social Policy & Administration, 52(5):998-1018

The pre-print (originally submitted) version is available here, which is also the same as the working paper from the LSE Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion available below. The web appendices and web tables — plus two of the datasets used — are available in a .zip file here

Paper

Success and failure in narrowing the disability employment gap: comparing levels and trends across Europe 2002–2014 (Geiger, van der Wel & Tøge 2017). BMC Public Health 17:928

Paper

Benefits conditionality for disabled people: stylised facts from a review of international evidence and practice (Geiger 2017). Journal of Poverty & Social Justice 25(2):107–128. The Web Appendices are available here

Paper

Did food insecurity rise across Europe after the 2008 crisis? An analysis across welfare regimes (Davis & Geiger, 2017). Social Policy & Society 16(3):343–360. An open-access version is available here.

My co-author Owen Davis chatted about the research on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed

Paper

Corporate social responsibility and conflicts of interest in the alcohol and gambling industries: a post-political discourse? (Geiger & Cuzzocrea, 2017). British Journal of Sociology 68(2):254-272. An open-access version is available here

Paper

Gender Roles and Employment Pathways of Older Women and Men in England (van der Horst, Lain, Vickerstaff, Clark, & Geiger, 2017). SAGE Open 7(4)

Paper

Pathways of Paid Work, Care Provision, and Volunteering in Later Careers: Activity Substitution or Extension? (van der Horst, Vickerstaff, Lain, Clark, and Geiger, 2017). Work, Aging and Retirement 3(4): 343-365. An open access version is available here

Paper

Beyond ‘mythbusting’: how to respond to myths and perceived undeservingness in the British benefits system(Geiger & Meueleman 2016). Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 24(3):291–306. An open-access version is available here

Paper

Can alcohol make you happy? A subjective wellbeing approach (Geiger & MacKerron, 2016). Social Science & Medicine

I wrote a piece on The Conversation on this, and it was picked up in a variety of media sources, including the Daily Mail and Washington Post. George's Mappiness data is too disclosive to share, but you can freely access the unformatted but peer-reviewed version of the paper and the web appendices.

Paper

The stigma of claiming benefits: a quantitative study (Baumberg 2016). Journal of Social Policy 45(2):181–189. An open access version is available here; you can also download the web appendices, and the data and Stata code

Paper

Disability prevalence and disability-related employment gaps in the UK 1998–2012: Different trends in different surveys? (Baumberg, Jones & Wass ). Social Science & Medicine 141:72–81

I blogged about the results here, while Vicki blogged about it over at The Conversation

Paper

From Impairment to Incapacity — Educational Inequalities in Disabled People’s Ability to Work (Baumberg 2015). Social Policy & Administration 49(2):182–198. An open access version is available here , and I blogged about the paper on openpop.

Paper

Fit-for-work — or work fit for disabled people? The role of changing job demands and control in incapacity claims (Baumberg 2014). Journal of Social Policy. An open access version is available here, and you can aceess the supplementary material (web appendices and Stata code for the analyses in this paper) here

Paper

Adjusting for unrecorded consumption in survey and per capita sales data: Quantification of impact on gender- and age-specific alcohol-attributable fractions for oral and pharyngeal cancers in Great Britain (Meier, Meng, Holmes, Baumberg, Purshouse, Hill-McManus, and Brennan 2013). Alcohol & Alcoholism 48(2):241–249

Paper

Three Ways to Defend Social Security in Britain (Baumberg 2012). Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 20:149–61. An open access version is available here, with appendices available here

Paper

Communicating Alcohol Narratives: Creating a Healthier Relationship with Alcohol (Anderson, Bitarello, Baumberg, Jarl & Stuckler 2011). Journal of Health Communication 16:27-36

Paper

World Trade Law and a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control [peer-reviewed editorial] (Baumberg 2010). Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 64:473-4. An open access version is available here or at the data depository ICPSR

Paper

How Will Alcohol Sales in the UK Be Affected If Drinkers Follow Government Guidelines? (Baumberg )Alcohol & Alcoholism 44(5):523-528. An open access version is available here

Paper

Trade and health: How World Trade Organisation (WTO) law affects alcohol and public health (Baumberg and Anderson 2008). Addiction 103:1952-1958. An open access version is available here.

This was published alongside a commentary, 'Reassurance — but not complacency — on trade law and alcohol: a response to Osterberg', Baumberg and Anderson 2008, Addiction 103:1959–1960

Paper

Health, alcohol and EU law: understanding the impact of European single market law on alcohol policies (Baumberg and Anderson 2008). European Journal of Public Health 18(4):392–398. An open access version is available here

Paper

The global economic burden of alcohol: a review and some suggestions (Baumberg 2006). Drug and Alcohol Review 25(6):537–552. An open access version is available here

REPORTS, BOOK CHAPTERS AND NON-PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS


Report

Opening doors: How to incentivise employers to create more opportunities for disabled workers (Geiger & Murphy 2025). London: Resolution Foundation.

Report

The 39 Steps: Realising the potential of Flex Plus working for disability inclusion (Hale, Hoque, & Geiger 2025). CSMH Report R012. London: ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health (CSMH).

Working paper

Mental ill-health among welfare claimants in the UK: The extent, nature, and impact on claimant experiences (Geiger, Scullion, Edmiston, de Vries, Summers, Ingold & Young 2025). Welfare at a (Social) Distance working paper, Dec 2024 version.

Report

After the WCA: Competing visions of disability and welfare (Geiger 2025). CSMH Report R011. London: ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health (CSMH).

Paper (not reviewed)

Building on broad support for better social security (Edmiston et al, 2023). IPPR Progressive Review, 30: 84-91.

Report

The rise and fall of anti-welfare attitudes across four decades: politics, pensioners and poverty (Geiger, de Vries, O'Grady & Summers, 2023). In British Social Attitudes 40. Note that my preferred version of this chapter (with the same content but the authors' choice of figures and formatting) is available here. We blogged about this chapter on the LSE Politics & Policy blog

Book chapter

Welfare at a (social) distance: Accessing social security and employment support during COVID- 19 and its aftermath (Robertshaw et al 2022). Chapter 2 in COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life during the Pandemic, p30-43, Policy Press.

WASD Report

Hunger and the welfare state: Food insecurity among benefit claimants during COVID-19 (Geiger, Edmiston, Scullion, Summers, de Vries, Ingold, Robertshaw and Young, Oct 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #6

WASD Report

Solidarity in a crisis? Trends in attitudes to benefits during COVID-19 (de Vries, Geiger, Scullion, Summers, Edmiston, Ingold, Robertshaw and Young, Sep 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #5

An updated version of this report was published as an academic paper, see above.

WASD Report

Should social security reach further? Ineligibility for benefits at the start of COVID-19 (Geiger, Scullion, Summers, Martin, Lawler, Edmiston, Gibbons, Ingold, Robertshaw, and de Vries, May 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #4

WASD Report

Non-take-up of benefits at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Geiger, Scullion, Summers, Martin, Lawler, Edmiston, Gibbons, Ingold, Robertshaw, and de Vries, Apr 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #3

WASD Report

Navigating Pandemic Social Security: Benefits, Employment and Crisis Support during COVID-19 (Edmiston, Robertshaw, Gibbons, Ingold, Geiger, Scullion, Summers, and Young, Feb 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #2

WASD Report

Claimants' experiences of the social security system during the first wave of COVID-19 (Summers, Scullion, Geiger, Robertshaw, Edmiston, Gibbons, Karagiannaki, De Vries and Ingold, Feb 2021). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Project Report #1

It was also covered in the Guardian

WASD Rapid Report

At the edge of the safety net: Unsuccessful benefits claims at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic Geiger, Scullion, Summers, Martin, Lawler, Edmiston, Gibbons, Ingold, Karagiannaki, Robertshaw, and de Vries, Oct 2020). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Rapid Report 3

It was covered in the Guardian and the Big Issue

WASD Rapid Report

Who are the new COVID-19 cohort of benefit claimants? (Edmiston, Geiger, De Vries, Scullion, Summers, Ingold, Robertshaw, Gibbons, and Karagiannaki, Sep 2020). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Rapid Report 2

WASD Rapid Report

Claiming But Connected to Work (Geiger, Karagiannaki, Edmiston, Scullion, Summers, Ingold, Robertshaw, and Gibbons Sep 2020). Welfare at a (Social) Distance Rapid Report 1

Working paper

The Growing American Health Penalty: International Trends in the Employment of Older Workers with Poor Health (Geiger, Böheim & Leoni ) IZA Discussion Paper 11769

Report

A Better WCA is Possible: disability assessment, public opinion and the benefits system (Geiger ) London: Demos

You can read the executive summary here, the full version here, and the online appendix here. A blog post setting out some of my recomendations for a better WCA was published in Total Politics. And a related version was publised as Ch3 (p32–41) of Opportunity for all Essays on transforming employment for disabled people and those with health conditions, published by the Learning and Work Institute and the Shaw Trust.

Ahead of the release of the report, some findings on benefits conditionality were featured in the Observer under the headline ‘A million benefit sanctions imposed on disabled people since 2010’, which was then followed up in a Guardian comment piece by Frances Ryan. As I put on this website alongside the Observer piece, these figures can also be found in my paper ‘Benefits conditionality for disabled people: stylised facts from a review of international evidence and practice’ (open-access, p109–111), and the appendices that provide the source for the UK benefit sanctions data is here.

The report is based on a number of my other publications, including Geiger 2018, Geiger 2017, de Vries, Reeves & Geiger 2017, and the original 2015 Demos report Rethinking the WCA. I also wrote a series of blog posts on the project’s blog, Rethinking Incapacity — you can see the highlights here.

Working Paper

Inequalities in the application of welfare sanctions in Britain (de Vries, Reeves and Geiger ) LSE International Inequalities Working paper 15. SocArXiv doi:10.31235/osf.io/exn68

Book chapter

False Beliefs and the Perceived Deservingness of Social Security Benefit Claimants (Geiger ) Chapter 4 in The Social Legitimacy of Targeted Welfare Attitudes to Welfare Deservingness edited by Wim van Oorschot, Femke Roosma, Bart Meuleman & Tim Reeskens

The pre-print version is available here, and if you want a copy of the final paper and don't have access then just drop me an email.

Editorial

Introduction to the special issue on ‘Disability and Conditional Social Security Benefits’ ()

This is the introduction to the special issue that includes my own paper on benefits conditionality above, as well as several other really interesting articles. A blog post summarising the editorial is available here.

Report

Tax avoidance and benefit manipulation: Views on its morality and prevalence (Geiger, Reeves & de Vries 2017). In Clery, Curtice, and Harding (eds.), British Social Attitudes 34, London: NatCen. We wrote two blog posts on the release of the report, one on the main findings of the chapter, the other on the sharp softening of attitudes towards benefit claimants. Rob & Aaron also wrote a piece in the Guardian later that year.

Report

Benefit ‘Myths’? The accuracy and inaccuracy of public beliefs about the benefits system (Baumberg 2016). CASEpaper 199, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). This has since been published in the journal Social Policy & Administration, see above for details.

Book chapter

Job Quality and the Self-employed: Is It Still Better to Work for Yourself? (Baumberg and Meager 2015). Ch6 in Felstead, Gallie & Green (eds.), Unequal Britain at Work, Oxford: Oxford University Press. A version of this was published by my co-author in the International Review of Entrepreneurship.

Report

Corporate Social Responsibility (Baumberg et al 2015). ALICE RAP Deliverable 11.2 - Addiction and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe: Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP). Also available here.

Report

Rethinking the Work Capability Assessment (Baumberg, Warren, Garthwaite and Bambra 2015). London: Demos. The executive summary is available as a separate file here.

Report

Disability, long-term conditions and poverty (MacInnes, Tinson, Horgan, Baumberg and Gaffney 2014). London: New Policy Institue, for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This was covered by the Disability News Service 18/7/2014.

Report

Benefits and the cost of living: Pressures on the cost of living and attitudes to benefit claiming (Baumberg 2014). In: British Social Attitudes: the 31st Report (ed. Park,A, Bryson,C and Curtice,J). London: NatCen Social Research. I blogged about this at LSE Politics & Policy.

Report

Addicts' share of alcohol and tobacco expenditures (Baumberg 2014). Report 1 in Disley et al (2014), Addiction Revenues: ALICE RAP Deliverable 11.2 - Addiction and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe: Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP). Also available here.

Pamphlet

Dismantling the barriers to social mobility (Gaffney and Baumberg 2014). London: Trades Union Congress (TUC). This was a very small project resulting in a pamphlet (Touchstone Extra Pamphlet #12); one of my main contributions was looking at public attitudes to mobility, and while this was cut from the final report for space reasons, I blogged about the results here.

Report

Benefits stigma in Britain (Baumberg, Bell and Gaffney 2012). London: Elizabeth Finn Care/Turn2us.The web appendices are available here.

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). Other people have written about the report in the Guardian (see this note on the figure used in the article; they also put this on their Datablog). [There are also blogs that are no longer available online, including by us at how benefits stigma is misunderstood (on LSE Politics & Policy), and by other people at the TUC's Touchstone blog (also reposted on Liberal Conspiracy).

There's also a 'mythbusting' report that comes alongside the report, called Read between the lines: confronting the myths about the benefits system (again, written Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney). Related versions include our earlier version for Red Pepper (version with footnotes), and a version produced by the trade union think-tank Class based on these.

Report chapter

Benefit cuts, welfare reform and inequality, in 'The Coalition Government and income inequality', One Society 2012.

Report chapter

How many qualitative interviews are enough? I contributed to this publication by the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), edited by Sarah Elsie Baker & Rosalind Edwards, and including some big names in qualitative research (as well as other early career people like me). It has now been downloaded over 100,000 times (!).

PhD thesis

The role of increasing job strain in deteriorating fitness-for-work and rising incapacity benefit receipt (Baumberg 2011). PhD thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). This thesis was (jointly) awarded the Richard Titmuss prize for the best thesis in Social Policy at LSE in 2011/12. The web appendices are are available here.

Book chapter

Self-reported fitness-for-work in Britain: trends and implications (Baumberg 2011). In Vickerstaff,S; Phillipson,C; and Wilkie, R (eds), Work, Health and Well-being: The challenges of managing health at work. Policy Press.

The methodological web appendices to this chapter are available for download here

Report

Best practice in estimating the costs of alcohol - Recommendations for future studies (Baumberg 2010). Copenhagen: World Health Organisation - Regional Office for Europe. A related report was published as Cost benefit analyses of alcohol policy - a primer (Anderson and Baumberg 2010), prepared for the SMART (Standardizing Measurement of Alcohol-Related Troubles) project.

Report

Economic impacts of alcohol pricing policy options in the UK (Hunt, Rabinovich and Baumberg 2010). Cambridge: RAND Europe for the Home Office. A 2011 version is available from the RAND website. This also continues work that I did as part of an expert group, published as Alcohol: Price, Policy and Public Health (SHAAP 2007), report on the Findings of the Expert Workshop on Price convened by SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems).

Editorial

The European strategy on alcohol: a landmark and a lesson [non peer-reviewed editorial] (Baumberg and Anderson 2007). Alcohol and Alcoholism, 42(1):1-2.

Report

Alcohol in Europe: A Public Health Perspective (Anderson and Baumberg 2006). London: Institute of Alcohol Studies for the European Commission. A version of the summary also appeared in Eurohealth 12(2):17-20.

Report

The value of alcohol policies: A review of the likely economic costs and benefits of policies to reduce alcohol-related harm on the global level (Baumberg 2006). Paper commissioned by the World Health Organisation for the WHO Expert Committee on Alcohol Problems.

Non-peer-reviewed paper

Stakeholders' views of alcohol policy (Anderson and Baumberg 2006). Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Other Drugs (English Supplement), 6:393:414.

Other things that have appeared in journals

A resource that I helped create was published in the news and notes section of Addiction, 103:1053 as A new resource for secondary analysis of alcohol: the UK Alcohol Data Map (Baumberg and Bennetts 2008). I've done a couple of book reviews, Book review of 'Corporate Social Responsibility and the Welfare State' (Brejning 2012). Social Policy and Administration, 47(7):850-852, and Book review of 'Understanding Disability Policy' (Roulstone & Prideaux 2011). Disability & Society. 28(3):427-428. I've also had one letter published in a journal, Alcohol policy: who should sit at the table? [letter] (Anderson and Baumberg 2007). Addiction, 102:335-6.

EVIDENCE SUBMISSIONS


Report

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions , for their 2021 inquiry into the Disability Employment Gap (Geiger, Jones, Bryan & Wass 2021). This was not part of the initial evidence submission process; instead, the four of us were invited to give oral evidence to the Committee, and we followed this up with this joint written submission dated 18/3/2021.

Evidence

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions, for their inquiry into ‘Benefit Sanctions’ (Geiger ), submission dated 25/5/2018. This is also available from the inquiry website. I also submitted further written evidence on , available in html or pdf

Evidence

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions, for their inquiry into PIP and ESA assessments (Geiger ), submission dated 11/11/2017. This is also available from the inquiry website in html and pdf

Report

Submission to the DWP consultation on the Work, Health & Disability Green Paper (Geiger 2017), submission dated 13/2/2017. The consultation webpage is here.

Report

Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions, for their inquiry into the 'Disability employment gap' (Geiger, Jones & Wass 2016). This is also available from the inquiry website (as html or PDF).

BLOG POSTS


Blog posts

I've also done a large number of blog posts, mostly at the Inequalities blog (including its earlier incarnation on Wordpress), but also on a number of external blogs. This include:

There's also a number of blog posts over at the LSE blogs: