"While unemployment fluctuates, the underlying core of a quarter-of-a-million sick people or sole parents is entrenched"

From the Welfare Working Group's 2010 report: Long-Term Welfare Dependency: The Issues

 

"Most working-age welfare benefits were introduced in the late 1930s, and for the next thirty years recipients comprised just 2 percent of the population and were overwhelmingly widows and invalids. The explosion in welfare began from the mid-seventies.
    "Getting to my point, while unemployment fluctuates the underlying core of [a quarter-of-a-million] sick people or sole parents is entrenched. The economy has to carry this population whether times are good or bad, whether there are jobs or not.
    "WHY this situation has developed - or been allowed to develop - could fill a thesis. But many of you will have lived through the entire period and can probably share some valuable observations. Feel free."

~ Lindsay Mitchell, from her post 'The disconnection between unemployment and welfare dependency'