Ben Baumberg Geiger

New stats out today with the first official estimates of take-up for Universal Credit (UC), the UK's main means-tested benefit for working-age families. Headline 7 in 10 families who are eligible for UC (or equivalent benefits), claim it.

Vulnerability xkcd.com/3314/

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Less than 1% of major party nominees for Congress are working class. It is one of the most fundamental ways that Congress is not representative. And their views, e.g. on unregulated gambling websites, are apt to be different. www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Re-reading Sam Lucas who has for his entire career insisted that non-probability samples are useless at best for understanding the social world. The vast majority of studies I read do not use probability samples. With big data etc., where are we with sampling theory? Do folks still teach it or nah?

Manchester City cheated Premier League rules, the Commission found. Did it also cheat HMRC? We've examined the decision and leaked Mancini documents. We think City likely failed to pay £12m in tax. There should be a criminal investigation. Thread:

And, let's be honest, the barbarians are at the gates. Not really a time to split hairs if the broad thrust can work.

This is my favourite Borges story.

The Atlas of Social Attitudes is now live: www.atlasofsocialattitudes.eu What is it, what can you do with it, and why did we build it? A short🧵. (1)

The first benefit cap stats have been published since the 2-child limit was scrapped. 165,000 families - containing over 370,000 children - are now hit by the benefit cap. That’s 50,000 more families than before. 1/4

AI is screwing up journal papers: Journal editor asks authors of 10 submitted papers to meet and discuss their paper. Of the 7 that showed up, 3 were unable to answer basic questions about the paper and 3 had difficulty when asked further questions on technical details… medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

In both China and the west, the gig economy has become a sort of safety net/labour market shock absorber. But automation is coming for a lot of this work. Which means the biggest impact of AI/robots might unfold in the dark, in the part of the economy hardest to track. www.ft.com/content/a2c3...

aleximas.substack.com/p/will-ai-so... The best blog ever written on AI and growth, by a clear margin. By @aleximas.bsky.social

BBC article is probably the best summary of mine and @benbgeiger.bsky.social's BSA chapter. Includes the important point that non-pensioner welfare spending **has not** been rising (as a % of GDP) chahttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4grdk95vgno

One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.

@benbgeiger.bsky.social and my report for BSA on attitudes to disabiltiy benefits is out today. Basic message: politicians shouldn't assume that there is a strong public appetite for cuts to disability benefits natcen.ac.uk/publications...

As we said late last year, local housing allowance rates and market rents should be relinked annually to prevent this constant cost of living squeeze for low-income renters. This should be a top priority for any new Government. Full details here ⬇️ buff.ly/jYw8YaA

The gap between the support low-income private tenants can get and market rents in their area has now reached 21%. It's approaching the record gap of 23% when support was last increased in 2024, but the government has given no plans to increase support until 2030.

The Timms review is hosting 15 national workshops online and in person to shape the recommendations that form part of its final report. We want Disabled people to be part of shaping these recommendations. There are 300 participant places available. Register as a participant here: buff.ly/ZtlUstR

New blogpost deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/08/acce... inspired by recent depressing experience as a peer reviewer. AI-generated #fraud is getting very hard to detect. #peerreview

New! Ny! Every World Cup is meant to have a legacy, this one could be the moment when the process of reclaiming and reforming the governance of football begins. By @davidgoldblatt.bsky.social josimarfootball.com/2026/07/14/d...

New post: **On “What’s really going on with mental health?” in the FT** ...following-up @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece about our research over the weekend, based on research with @chrishenking.bsky.social inequalities.substack.com/p/on-whats-r...

The Timms Review steering group - which I'm one of 15 members of - has published its interim report into PIP, available from www.gov.uk/government/p... The Review has found that while PIP is valued, it is not fit for purpose. The steering group will make their final recommendations in autumn.

What if Andy Burnham could raise £15bn – without a tax rise? There's one catch. He'd need to solve the UK’s biggest and least-discussed tax problem. Almost half of all small business corporation tax isn't being paid - and nobody knows why. Thread:

How much power do workers in precarious sectors feel they have to shape their working conditions? They told us, not a lot ⤵️

Check out these user led organisation job opportunities tell your friends and colleagues please shapingourlives.org.uk/join-our-team/

This is very good and, I think, persuasive:

Since defence spending’s recent peak in the mid-80s non-pensioner welfare has grown from around 4.8.% of GDP to 5.1% now. Importantly, non-pensioner welfare is now about the level of the mid-90s, below its global financial crisis peak, but has seen some rise from its level immediately pre-pandemic.

The chart focused on working-age welfare. But it contained two mistakes. First, it focused only on benefits delivered by DWP but that means it appears that spending rises as the administration of some benefits changed from HMRC to DWP (with the switch from tax credits to UC this matters a lot).

As debates rage about where to get the money for higher defence spending, it’s important we have a clear picture of how we spent the peace dividend while it was around. Thread 🧵⤵️

If anyone had any doubt about what kind of publisher Frontiers is, this is a shocking whistleblower account

New WP, just in time for #ASHEcon26! What started off as a project to learn LLM use for text analysis turned accidentally into a paper about stigma. [1/n]

Falling payroll jobs in the latest ONS stats, alongside a growing population mean the employment rate must be falling. We estimate a 16+ unemployment rate in February of 60.8 per cent, substantially down on the 2023 high point of 62.0 per cent. More in our Substack ➡️ buff.ly/rBt8UM1

They seem to be constructing an actual deep state - a parallel digital infrastructure with no transparency or accountability.

‘Bonkers’: the audacious plan to create a 1 million-person city near Cambridge as.ft.com/r/dbdd2e1b-c...

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Looking at the same data over the whole period we have data, new job starts have fallen a lot since covid reopening, and are now well below pre-covid patterns. Job leavers (including to new jobs) have been much more stable. To split out whether job starters or leavers are job changers needs LFS. 2/

In response to my rant yesterday, I was asked how we can make better parks and other public places for teenage girls? What do they want? I have answers to this, so now a positive 🧵. Starting in Sweden, where this was co-designed by teenage girls.

***How to get disability statistics you can trust*** New post on Inequalities: My last post described the 'disability statistics disaster' - now I explain how to fix it inequalities.substack.com/p/disability...

New! Ny! Fifa and its 'relationship' with the press. A Josimar editorial. josimarfootball.com/2026/05/14/o...

Brilliant public service in figuring out why the headline doing the rounds is complete nonsense

Well, that Express headline was always going to raise a few eyebrows!😳 Starmer is responsible for embracing polygamy to appease Muslims, and so he's increasing their benefits?? That's the implication. After all, this "started in April", right? Wrong! 🧵1/25

From now on, I'm going to write papers where I take an arbitrary performance metric, restrict the sample to top performers on that metric, and then hunt for negative correlations with everything else in the truncated sample. I'm at a business school, so this should be extremely lucrative.

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

Happening today