Farage reckons that well over 50% of Scots live on benefits.
I’ll bet that more than 50% of the UK population “live on benefits of some kind”:
Pension
Housing benefit
Child benefit
Tax credit
Disability living allowance
Job seekers
etc
What percentage of the UK’s adult population is dependent on the welfare state?
The welfare state is a big part of British family life, with 20.3 million families receiving some kind of benefit (64% of all families), about 8.7 million of them pensioners. For 9.6 million families, benefits make up more than half of their income (30% of all families), around 5.3 million of them pensioners. The number of families receiving benefits will be between 1 and 2 million fewer now because of changes to child tax credits that mean some working families who previously got a small amount now get nothing.
The number of people who receive more in benefits and public services than they pay in tax is at record levels, official figures show.
More than half of households now take more from the public purse than they contribute, thanks to a generation of surging Government expenditure.
It has left a minority of middle class taxpayers bearing a growing share of the tax bill.
Well-off families now receive £1 in benefits and services for every £5.10 they contribute in tax.
Some 52 per cent of households, or 13.8 million families, received more in benefits and public services than they contributed in taxes last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Households with an average income of £104,000 paid £30,000 more in tax than they received from the state last year, ONS figures show.
The top ten per cent of earners contributed £26,984 in income and council tax, plus £10,303 in indirect taxes such as alcohol duty and VAT – a contribution to the public purse of £37,287.
They received £2,284 in state cash benefits, which include child benefit, maternity pay and pensions.
The cost of educating their children came to £1,274, while they used NHS treatment worth £3,410 – meaning their total cost to the Exchequer was £7,264.
By contrast, a family with the national median income of £23,069 received £3,798 more in benefits and services than they paid in taxes last year.
They paid £4,620 in direct tax and £5,029 in indirect taxes, but received £6622 in cash benefits. They received schooling worth £2623 and NHS services worth £4,202.
In total, they paid in £9,649 and received £13,477. It means for every £1 they paid in, they got £1.40 back.
The poorest ten per cent of families, with wages of £3,875 a year, paid £4,611 in direct and indirect taxes and received £13,559 in cash benefits and services. It means they received £2.94 in state support for every £1 they paid in tax.
