Couples balancing work, money and care: exploring the shifting landscape under Universal Credit

在环球信贷(UC)的保护伞下推出的激进福利改革的背景下，要求有受抚养子女的夫妇的双方寻找并进入工作，即使其中一方已经就业，并将一个家庭的全部福利--包括生活费、子女和住房--合并到一笔月度付款中，就像UC所做的那样，是史无前例的。政府声称，在夫妻家庭中延长工作激活和条件将减少对福利的依赖，并帮助伴侣实现更好的工作和生活平衡。他们说，减少福利支付的数量和频率反映了职场，将使家庭能够更好地预算。学者、公民社会和倡导组织则不那么乐观。他们指出，将儿童福利合并为一项奖励，颠覆了英国社会保障制度中一项长期确立的原则，即儿童福利应支付给关心孩子的父母(Lister，2010)。研究还证明，向主要照顾者支付儿童津贴能够使国家转移支付在家庭内部重新分配(Lundberg等人，1997年，Goode等人，1998年)。其他研究表明，福利的标签、分离和不同的时间安排通常有助于而不是损害资金管理，帮助受助人理解资金的用途，促进预算编制，并影响资金用于什么或谁(Kempson，1996，Goode等人，1999)。如果每月一次的付款被存入一个一方没有或受到限制的账户，一些夫妻关系中的权力不平等也可能减少另一方获得独立收入的机会(Bennett and Sung，2013)。经济独立性降低反过来可能导致关系不稳定(Griffiths 2017)，与政府支持夫妻关系和稳定家庭的目标背道而驰。学者和民间社会组织试图提高人们对UC潜在的“钱包到钱包”收入转移的认识，以及可能对妇女的经济独立、夫妇对家庭财务的管理、妇女和儿童的贫困以及夫妇关系的不利影响(CPAG，2010，妇女预算小组，2011年)。然而，没有人知道受影响的夫妇会如何应对UC；这些政策在世界上任何地方都是未经试验和检验的。通过开展第一项实证研究，探索UC对夫妇家庭的更广泛影响，这项研究的结果将有助于填补证据基础上的这一重要空白。这项为期三年的纵向定性研究将对75对有抚养子女的低收入夫妇进行抽样调查，调查福利改革的这些方面是如何得到回应和影响的，包括工作照料模式、家庭内部财务管理和分配、性别角色和性别关系。为了捕捉对男性和女性的不同影响以及随着时间的推移夫妇行为的变化，并确保包括新的加州大学申领人，以及移民到加州大学的福利和税收抵免申请者，将在英国4个地区-巴斯、坎布里亚郡、默西塞德和因弗内斯-进行单独和联合的面对面采访，分两个阶段进行。第一阶段将访问50对夫妇，包括100名伴侣，第二阶段将访问50对夫妇。第二阶段面试的一半(25)将是纵向的，包括在第一阶段重新采访夫妇。另一半(25人)将是第二阶段新招募的夫妇，在两个研究阶段总共有75对夫妇和150名伴侣。将编写与设计和实施普遍信贷、工作年龄福利改革、两性平等和工作家庭和解政策有关的结果和政策影响，并向学术界和非学术界受众广泛传播。

In the context of radical welfare reforms being rolled out under the umbrella of Universal Credit (UC), requiring both partners in a couple with dependent children to look for and enter work, even when one partner is already in employment, and merging a family's entire welfare entitlement - including money for living costs, children and housing - into a single monthly payment, as UC does, is unprecedented. The government claims that extending work activation and conditionality in couple families will reduce welfare dependency and help the partners achieve a better work-life balance. Decreasing the number and frequency of welfare payments reflects the world of work and will allow families to budget better, they say. Academics, civil society and advocacy organisations are less sanguine. Absorption of benefits intended for children into a single award, they point out, reverses a long established principle in UK social security that child-contingent benefits should be paid to the caring parent (Lister, 2010). Research also attests to the effectiveness of paying child benefits to the main carer in enabling state transfers to be redistributed within households (Lundberg et al., 1997, Goode et al., 1998). Other studies suggests that the labelling, separation and differential timing of benefits often assists rather than impairs money management, helping recipients to understand what the money is awarded for, facilitating budgeting and influencing on what or whom the monies are spent (Kempson, 1996, Goode et al., 1999). If the single monthly payment is made into an account to which one partner has no or limited access, inequalities of power within some couple relationships could also reduce the other partner's access to an independent income (Bennett and Sung, 2013). Reduced financial independence could, in turn, contribute towards relationship instability (Griffiths 2017), countering the government's aim of supporting couple relationships and stable families. Academics and civil society organisations have sought to raise awareness of UC's potential 'purse to wallet' income transfers and the possible adverse effects on women's financial independence, couples' management of their household finances, women's and children's poverty and couple's relationships (CPAG, 2010, Women's Budget Group, 2011). However, no-one knows how affected couples will respond to UC; these policies are untried and untested anywhere in the world. By conducting the first empirical study to explore UC's wider effects on couple families, findings from this research will help fill this important gap in the evidence base. This three year, longitudinal, qualitative research study will investigate how these aspects of welfare reform are being responded to and affecting work-care patterns, intra-household financial management and distribution, and gender roles and relations among a sample of 75 low-income couples with dependent children. To capture differential effects on men and women and changes in couples' behaviour over time, and to ensure the inclusion new UC claimants, as well as benefit and tax credit claimants migrated onto UC, separate and joint, face-to-face interviews with both members of the couple will be conducted in 4 UK areas - Bath, Cumbria, Merseyside and Inverness - over two phases of research. 50 couples, comprising 100 partners, will be interviewed in phase one, and 50 couples will be interviewed in phase two. Half of the phase two interviews (25) will be longitudinal and involve re-interviewing couples interviewed in phase one. The other half (25) will be couples newly recruited in phase two, giving a total of 75 couples and 150 partners across both phases of research. Findings and policy implications will be written up in relation to the design and implementation of Universal Credit, the reform of working age benefits, gender equality and work-family reconciliation policies, and widely disseminated to academic and non-academic audiences.