The Interaction of Health, Labour Market Conditions, and Long-Term Sickness Benefit Claims in a Post-industrial City: A Glasgow Case Study

Abstract

Glasgow offers a classic example of a local economy of Northern Britain (Rowthorn, 2010), a former industrial city that has lost a huge amount of industrial employment since the 1970s and is still in the process of recovery, with relatively modest service sector expansion and particular reliance on public service jobs. Like other such areas, it has had a very high level of long-term sickness and consequent dependency on sickness-related benefits. In fact it has a higher level of long-term sickness benefit claimants as a proportion of the working age population (12.3%) than any other British big city — even though this level is much lower than it was. With 50,960 such claimants in February 2011, it also has the second largest number of all local authority areas in the UK, after Birmingham (Beatty and Fothergill, 2011). Such a high level of sickness benefit claims is a not only a major fiscal issue but is also generally agreed to reflect an unacceptably low level of well-being in the local population. For these reasons, Glasgow’s experience is particularly worth studying.