Database: Households on Universal Credit
Description
Payment indicator refers only to those households who have had a Universal Credit award amount calculated. This field reflects whether the household has received a payment for a given month, or has a nil award. Households may not be in payment if, for example, earnings for the period are sufficiently high that the taper rate reduces their entitlement to £0.
If you build a table to show average Universal Credit award amounts without including this variable, the average award will be considerably lower as cases that are not in payment are included in the calculation. By including this variable in the table, you can find the average amount received by actually received by households who are entitled to Universal Credit by looking at the values under 'Yes'.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, temporary operational changes were put in place that meant claims not in payment were kept open for longer than before. This meant a larger proportion of open claims were not in payment since the onset of the pandemic.
Classification
Applicable to: All Households
The Payment Indicator field can take the following values:
Total number of categories: 2
Quality Statement
During rollout of Universal Credit, the types of claims accepted varied for different regions. This led to regional differences in the number of claims that were in payment or not in payment. As such, figures from before December 2018 (when rollout was complete) should be carefully considered before any inferences are drawn around geographical differences in the proportions of households in payment.