Raising the Minimum Age of Entitlement to Income Support: Social Security Act 1988

Abstract

Throughout the past fifteen years a relatively low demand for youth labour has continued to interrupt the traditional progress of school leavers into apprenticeship or employment in Britain and most other western countries. Although has declined in Britain in recent years (at least in official terms) the percentage fall in youth has been matched by an almost equal percentage rise in Youth Training Scheme participation.1 For young people seeking but unable to secure employment, there has not exactly been financial neutrality between the choices open to them. First, there is full-time study on minimal educational maintenance allowances or discretionary awards (of usually no more than ? 15 per week). A second is a full-time search for employment (or perhaps part-time study plus a search for work if the twelve hour or twenty-one hour rules apply2) on supplementary benefit of?18.75 per week (at the short-term non-householder rate until April 1988). Finally, there is the of a place on the Youth Training Scheme plus an allowance of ?28.50 (?35 in the second year on the scheme). Now that all sixteenand seventeen-year-old people are to be guaranteed a Youth Training Scheme place,3 the Government has decided that the option of unemployment should be removed from them. Section 4 of the Social Security Act 1988 raises the minimum age of entitlement to income support (the replacement, in combination with the Social Fund, for supplementary benefit) from sixteen to eighteen years. This article examines the reasons for and policy issues surrounding this development. This is, in fact, a measure of great significance. For one thing, it removes the link (only marginally weakened by the introduction of waiting periods of up to a few months in 1980) between the school leaving age and the minimum age of entitlement to the safety net means-tested benefit which was built into the 1948 National Assistance scheme and has remained ever since. The reform's practical significance is that, although a small number of sixteenand