Solidarity in a crisis? Trends in attitudes to benefits during COVID-19

There were good reasons to think COVID-19 would increase public support for welfare: it was a time of apparent increased solidarity in the face of a collective crisis; of clearly ‘deserving’ claimants; and of increases in direct experiences of the benefits system. And yet, the limited evidence collected so far suggests that attitudes have not changed.In this report, we explain this puzzle in the UK, using two datasets which are uniquely suited to the challenge: (i) bimonthly data collected by YouGov from 2019-2021, and (ii) a nationally representative survey we conducted in June 2021.We found that COVID-19 prompted little change in public welfare attitudes. Attitudes did become slightly more generous during the first wave of the pandemic, only to rebound quickly in the Summer of 2020. The second COVID wave prompted another small increase in generosity. However, this appears unlikely to have endured.Overall, comparing May 2021 with the pre-pandemic period, the public were less anti-welfare than before – but only slightly. In the context of a considerable softening in attitudes 2013-19, however, all of the pandemic-associated changes are small.There are two possible explanations for this muted change: firstly, that the pandemic has not meaningfully changed attitudes; and second, that attitudes have changed, but in ways which bracket COVID claimants away from pre-pandemic claimants, which we term ‘COVID exceptionalism’. We consistently found that the public believes COVID-19 claimants are considerably more deserving of benefits than pre-pandemic claimants. We did not show that pre-pandemic claimants were viewed harshly: pre-pandemic claimants were viewed quite sympathetically, and COVID claimants simply more so. But we find support for ‘COVID exceptionalism’. COVID-19 claimants are considered to be different from ‘normal’ claimants, and welfare attitudes are to some extent insulated from sympathetic perceptions of this new type of claimant.