LGBT+ Welfare and Assets in Great Britain

This project aimed to understand the experiences of LGBT+ people when they access social security benefits. We use LGBT+ as an umbrella term to describe all people who are not heterosexual and/or not cisgender. This mixed-methods research used secondary analysis of survey datasets that are designed to be representative of the population of Great Britain, and qualitative interviews with 114 LGBT+ people who had claimed social security benefits within the last decade, or that had specific experiences of accumulating wealth over the life-course. The surveys used were the Family Resources Survey ([FRS], most results based on a sample of 68,757 individuals recorded between 2016-21), the Wealth and Assets Survey ([WAS] 42,355 individuals, 2014-20), and the UK Household Longitudinal Study ([UKHLS] c.48,000 individuals, 2011-20). These surveys record sexual identity in terms of whether someone is bisexual, homosexual, or heterosexual, allowing comparisons between LGB and non-LGB respondents. The LGBT+ population is demographically quite different from the wider population, in ways that are closely associated with many of the outcomes and experiences we are interested in. In statistical analyses of the survey data, we used regression modelling to try to control for these differences.