The use of the Discretionary Social Fund across families : evidence from the Expenditure and Food Surveys

The Centre for Research in Social Policy has been commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to research the current role and future direction of the Social Fund. The research is focused on the discretionary Social Fund. This is one of two quantitative working papers produced as part of this research. This working paper is based on a secondary analysis of the Expenditure and Food Surveys and examines families’ use of the discretionary Social Fund. The other working paper uses data from the Family Resources Survey to examine Social Fund receipt (Legge, 2006).