About this event

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 seminar examines how Covid 19 related policy changes to Universal Credit (UC)—most notably the temporary £20 weekly uplift—shaped claimants’ mental health during the pandemic. Pre pandemic research consistently showed that UC was associated with worse psychological wellbeing compared with legacy benefits. However, the pandemic introduced substantial, UC specific changes that created a natural experiment for reassessing these effects. Drawing on nationally representative UK Household Longitudinal Study data (2018–2021), we use a difference in differences design to compare mental health outcomes for UC claimants versus those receiving legacy benefits. Psychological distress was measured using the continuous GHQ 36 and the caseness threshold of the GHQ 12. We find that claiming UC during the pandemic was associated with a 1 point reduction in GHQ 36 psychological distress (95% CI: –1.60, –0.29) relative to legacy claimants, even after adjusting for confounders. UC receipt was also linked to a 5 percentage point reduction in GHQ 12 caseness, though with wider uncertainty. Event study estimates indicate that improvements were concentrated in the treatment year, with no detectable effects one year later. These findings suggest that the £20 uplift and operational changes to UC mitigated psychological distress, reversing the negative mental health patterns observed pre pandemic. The results highlight the sensitivity of mental health outcomes to benefit design and generosity, offering important lessons for policymakers considering future reforms to UC and the wider social security system. Marina Kousta is currently an LSE Fellow in Health Policy. Her research interests broadly include the political economy of health, poverty, and the drivers and impacts of health and socioeconomic inequalities. Her recent research has focused on the effects of social policies and welfare reforms on health and socioeconomic outcomes. Marina recently completed an ESRC-funded PhD at King’s College London, where she examined the interplay between welfare reforms, food insecurity, and mental health outcomes in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before her PhD, Marina worked in pharmaceutical consulting and completed placements at the Hellenic Parliament, UNESCO, and ELIAMEP.

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