Disability benefits, people with learning disabilities and autistic people - 2023 update

This is a quick blogpost about disability benefit statistics, people with learning disabilities and autistic people, updating one from early 2021, with figures mainly up to November 2022. All these figures are obtained from the excellent DWP Stat-Xplore online tool. I’m going to talk about three disability benefits here:

1) Disability Living Allowance. The Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a tax-free benefit for disabled people who need help with mobility or care costs. Disability Living Allowance (except for those born before 9 April 1948 and those aged under 16 at the time of application) is being replaced by Personal Independence Payments. The DLA consists of two components which are assessed and paid separately, a Care Award (paid at higher, middle and lower rates) and a Mobility Award (paid at higher and lower rates).

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) provides quarterly information on Disability Living Allowance (DLA), that can be disaggregated for adults with ‘learning difficulties’ in England. The DWP definition of ‘learning difficulties’ includes ‘learning difficulties’’ (an old generic code still used for pre-2008 cases before more detailed sub-categories were introduced), ‘Down’s syndrome’, ‘Fragile X syndrome’, ‘learning disability – Other/type not known’, ‘Autism’, ‘Asperger syndrome’, and ‘Retts disorder’². This definition is much broader than other government departments’ definitions of the population of people with learning disabilities.

2) Attendance Allowance (AA), which is paid to disabled people over the age of 65 to help with personal care. This can be paid at two rates to reflect the level of care required, and in the statistics uses the same broad definition of ‘learning difficulties’ as the DLA statistics.

3) Personal Independence Payment (PIP); a benefit for adults with sickness and/or disability replacing the DLA, but with some important differences. Information on the PIP is available on a monthly basis for adults with learning disabilities, under the category ‘Main Disabling Condition/Psychiatric Disorders/Learning Disability Global’, and for autistic people under the label ‘Main Disabling Condition/Psychiatric Disorders/Autistic Spectrum Disorders’.

In this blogpost I’m trying to get a sense of how many people with learning disabilities and autistic people (I’m assuming that the broader category of ‘learning difficulties’ is mainly these two groups of people) have been getting some form of disability benefit over time. To help with this, I’ve looked at four broad age groups: children and young people (age 0-15 for DLA); younger working age adults (age 16-44 for DLA and PIP); older working age adults (age 45-64 for DLA and PIP); and older adults (age 65+ for DLA, PIP and AA). The graphs include people getting payment for the benefit concerned, and are either people with ‘learning difficulties’ (DLA and AA) or, separately, people with learning disabilities and autistic people (PIP).

What do we find? The first graph shows how many children and young people with ‘learning difficulties’ received DLA (the only one of these three benefits where children and young people are eligible), from May 2012 to November 2022. The graph shows a steady increase in the number of children and young people with ‘learning difficulties’ getting DLA, with if anything a faster rate of increase in recent years, up to 267,436 people in November.

The next graph below shows information for younger working age adults (aged 16 to 44), from May 2012 to November 2022, and includes both the DLA and the introduction of the PIP. As more and more people transferred from DLA to PIP there was a rapid decrease in the number of younger working age adults with ‘learning difficulties’ getting the DLA up to May 2020, after which numbers have stayed fairly stable. There have been similar rises over time in the number of people with learning disabilities and autistic people getting a PIP, although May 2020 increases for people with learning disabilities have been smaller than for autistic people. The grey line in this graph shows the combined total of people getting one of these disability benefits. This shows some fluctuations over time, with year-on-year increases punctuated by a dip in 2016, no real change from 2018 to 2020, and a steady increase from 2020. By November 2022 258,777 younger working age adults with learning difficulties, learning disabilities, or autistic younger working age adults, were getting either DLA or PIP.

The third graph, below, has the same information for older working age adults with learning difficulties aged 45-64 (note that the vertical scale for this graph is different to the previous ones, as the overall numbers are smaller). This graph also shows a rapid decrease in the number of people getting DLA from 2012 to 2020, and staying fairly stable since. There was a sharp rise in the number of people with learning disabilities getting PIP up to 2020 but numbers have stayed fairly stable since, with relatively few but gradually increasing numbers of autistic people getting PIP. The combined total for this age group shows a much slower rate of increase for people getting either disability benefit, with fluctuations but no clear trend over time from 2018 onwards. By November 2022 61,327 older working age adults with learning difficulties, learning disabilities, or autistic older working age adults, were getting either DLA or PIP.

The final graph (again with a different vertical scale as the number of people is much smaller) has information on the number of older people with ‘learning difficulties’ (DLA, AA) or older people with learning disabilities or autistic people (PIP) getting one of these disability benefits. The number of older adults with learning difficulties getting AA is relatively small and has gradually declined from 2012 to 2022. As with older working age adults, sharp decreases in the number of older people getting DLA is accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of older adults with learning disabilities getting PIP but relatively few older autistic adults getting PIP. Overall, the number of older adults with learning difficulties, learning disabilities or autistic older adults getting one of these disability benefits has steadily increased from 2012 to 2022, but the rate of increase has slowed over time. By November 2022 20,269 older adults with learning difficulties, learning disabilities, or autistic older adults, were getting either DLA, AA or PIP.

Overall, the number of children and young people with 'learning difficulties' and the number of younger working age adults (particularly autistic adults, but also to a lesser extent younger adults with learning disabilities) getting disability benefits has continued to increase over time, even (after a blip) with the introduction of PIP. This is in contrast to older working age adults, when there have been no real increases in the number of people getting disability benefits for some years. For older people aged 65+, there was a very gradual but steady increase in the numbers of older people with learning disabilities and autistic people getting some form of disability benefit. For me, a few questions come out of this.

For the younger age groups, most of the increase in the number of people getting disability benefits may be largely being driven by an increase in the number of autistic people getting a disability benefit, which is not happening in the older age groups - is this perhaps a function of diagnostic services prioritising children and young people? 

Where people with learning disabilities are identifiable (all the adult age groups), from May 2020 onwards there has been little or no increase in the number of people with learning disabilities getting a disability benefit, which is particularly pronounced in the older working age adult group (45-64 years). Is this some combination of a continuing tightening of eligibility criteria for adults with learning disabilities, combined with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and deaths of middle-aged and older people with learning disabilities where 55-64 years was the peak age of death for people with learning disabilities?

Finally, if the increases that are evident among young groups of people (particularly autistic people) are sustained, and move through into older age groups, what will this do to the already tightening eligibility criteria for any sort of support for people?