CASE Social Exclusion Seminar: Daria Popova

This is a HYBRID event, with an option to join the seminar in-person at the LSE, or virtually. The speaker will present in-person.

This study examines the trends, characteristics and effects of benefit non-take-up in the UK since 2010, focusing on three major programmes: Child Benefit, Universal Credit/legacy benefits, and Pension Credit. To measure take-up, UKHLS data on observed benefit receipt are combined with the UKMOD tax-benefit microsimulation model, which reconstructs eligibility. The analysis examines how take-up of the three programmes has evolved over time, distinguishing between temporary and persistent non-claiming. It then compares the characteristics of eligible claimants and non-claimants, examining differences in income, education, household composition and employment. Finally, it estimates the effects of persistent non-take-up on household income and wellbeing outcomes over a ten-year period.

Dr Daria Popova is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Essex, and Deputy Director at the Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis. Her work focuses on the quantitative assessment of welfare state policies and their distributional effects, with a particular interest in how policies affect intrahousehold inequalities.