The Disability Pay Gap - The Reality of Receiving Benefits As A Disabled Person
As the world began to recover from the consequences of COVID, we found ourself met with a whole new crisis — one that, specifically for one group of people, could prove to be just as dangerous, and even deadly.
The cost of living crisis has not only hit the UK, but the entire world. Everywhere you look, there are people struggling to make ends meet, forced to make difficult decisions in order to keep roofs over their heads and food in their bellies.
But one community in particular has been forgotten about amidst all of this ruckus, and it also happens to be the very same community that is disproportionately affected by not only the cost of living crisis, but the cap and lessening of income that has seemingly come hand in hand.
That community is the disabled community.
Now, this is far from the first time that the disabled community has been forgotten about or even considered in political conversations, but when it comes to these matters, our voices need to be heard. Desperately so.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a disabled person that’s able to work a full time job, a part time job, or no job at all, we are all still being disproportionately affected by this crisis.
Now, you might be wondering why exactly that is. Money is money is money, right? It goes on bills, on food, on the necessities. Well, for a lot of disabled people, our necessities can be vastly different than that of those who are able-bodied.
There are so many additional needs that income needs to be spent on that able-bodied would never even think to consider — things like mobility aids (because, no, it isn’t as simple as getting one on the NHS), medications and treatments (because not everyone has medical exemption or are able to access adequate and timely enough care on the NHS), wheelchair accessible vehicles, assistive technology, carers, and there is still so much more that could be added to that seemingly ever growing list of additional costs needed for disabled people to merely exist and survive in a world that is not build for them.
Yes, income support and disability benefits, at the very least, begin to help in bridging the gap of the disability pay disparity, but it is still nowhere near as much money as is needed to live an independent lifestyle, especially in light of inflation and the cost of living crisis.
Everywhere you look, there are people using their last pennies to buy food, people foregoing medications because they’re unable to afford it; there are people who are struggling to move because they can’t afford mobility aids, that haven’t got the means or the access for an accessible home, or even a home at all.
This is the reality for so many people, not just those that are disabled, but the disability community has been hit hard, and it is also the community whose voices have been drowned out the most.
Did you know that both disabled individuals and households face significantly higher costs to our able-bodied counterparts, with the additional cost disparity being as little as £583 to £1,010 a month, which comes to a total of an additional extra cost somewhere in the realm between £135 to £233 a week!
The average amount that people on personally independence payment (PIP) benefits receive yearly, be it alongside a working income or not is around an average of £6,900 a year — making it an average of £575 a month. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) generally pays between £30 and £188 per week, or an average of £5,520. With Universal Credit (UC) it varies between £720 and £1,270 a month.
To the naked eye, that may seem like a lot of money — it does even to me. That is, at least, until you remember two very pressing factors in this: not every person who is claiming benefits, especially those that are disabled, will be eligible or actively claiming all forms of benefits, or will be receiving the highest form of income.
That money also seems less and less when you remember just how much every single thing costs in this day and age. The average cost of rent is an estimated £1,300 a month, with utility bills estimated to be between, at least, £400 to £600 a month.
The average monthly wage for working adults is an estimated amount of between £2,500 and £3,820, and despite this being a significantly larger amount than those that are disabled and living on benefits, they are still struggling to make ends meet.
More and more people are working overtime, living with their parents for longer than they want because the cost of everything is just too great nowadays. If able-bodied people are unable to afford the necessities, how are disabled people expected to do the same, but with a significantly smaller salary?
People view those that depend on benefit schemes as lazy, as leeches on society, as a drainage on taxpayer money, but what you don’t know is this - many of these people who are on benefits, who are unable to work, would give absolutely anything to be able to do so.
Benefits aren’t easy to be approved for, not by any means. The process is exhaustive, and only those that are in true need of income related support are approved. It isn’t given out willy-nilly, no matter what misconceptions you may have seen or heard about beforehand.
On top of all of this, Keir Starmer and the UK government have decided to drastically cut income benefit schemes by massive amounts, with an estimated 3.8 million disabled people forced to face the high likelihood of losing out on up to 60% of their current income.
As if living with a disability (or multiple disabilities) that require more and more daily costs isn’t enough, our lives are now being made infinitely harder and scarier because we don’t know what will come next.
How long will we be able to afford food, a roof over our head, water and electricity, clothes? How long until more and more of us are fundraising just to keep ourselves safe, or are homeless, with our safety, our lives and our livelihood continuously put at risk every day for the foreseeable future.
While this might not be the reality for all disabled people, the mere fact that it is the reality for just the smallest fraction of us is scary enough. Something needs to happen, something needs to change, and it all starts with the government.
We need to be viewed as people, not just a pit where money goes to waste. We are human beings. We contribute to the world every bit as much as others do, just in different ways. It’s about time that we’re treated as such.
You wouldn’t expect able-bodied people to live and to struggle like this, so why should us disabled people have to?
Written by Phoebe Jenkins
