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Disabled People: Poverty

Answer

The extension of the single-room rate for housing benefit and the cap on household welfare payments are expected to affect relatively few people and therefore have a small¹ impact on the numbers of disabled people living below the poverty line. The impact of these policies on disabled people will be mitigated by the following measures: Currently those in receipt of the severe disability premium within housing benefit are exempt from the shared room rate and single room rent, that is customers who receive at least the middle rate care component of disability living allowance and where no one gets a carer's allowance for them. This exemption will continue to apply to those in receipt of middle and higher rate care components of DLA, as appropriate, once the age threshold is raised to 35 in April 2012. In recognition of their additional needs, all households with a disability living allowance claimant will be exempted from the cap on household welfare payments. "¹ Estimates from the Family Resources Survey are rounded to the nearest 100,000 and the unrounded number of households expected to be affected is less than 50,000. The preferred measure of low income (the poverty line) is defined as being in a household with a household income of less than 60 per cent of contemporary median income. The median income is the income of the middle person in the population. such that half the population have incomes below the median and half the population have incomes above the median. The median is used instead of the mean income because the mean is affected by outlying cases with very high income values."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

3476; 722 c16-7WA

Session

2010-12

Related items

Comprehensive Spending Review
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Parliamentary proceedings
House of Lords

Disabled People: Poverty
Monday, 6 December 2010
Written questions
House of Lords

Subjects

Disability Benefits rules Housing benefit Exemptions Poverty Social security benefits

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk