DWP benefit claimants could be worse off until 2025 due to inflation rises, despite receiving cost of living payments, a think tank has said.
Benefit payments will be uprated in April in line with inflation, but the increase will not recover the ground lost in recent years. The change will “merely take them back to around the real level they were at a year earlier”, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said.
Hundreds of thousands of people could be better off if they earned less due to the way the government’s cost of living payments will work, the organisation said, adding that more money is being spent overall than if benefits had been raised in line with inflation. Real benefit rates were 7.6% lower in 2022 compared with their pre-pandemic levels in 2019, and will be 6.2% lower in 2023 and 2.0% lower in 2024, the IFS said.
