Britain did something very similar after the deindustrialisation of the 1970s. The number of Incapacity Benefit claimants more than trebled between 1980 and 1995. As a welfare adviser, I personally witnessed claimants being coached to apply for incapacity benefit. There was a clear quid-pro-quo - unemployed people disappeared from the statistics in exchange for a bit more money.

Millions of unemployed men in former industrial towns were effectively consigned to the scrapheap, with no real effort made to create new jobs or provide retraining. Both major parties maintained the ruse for decades. The current Tory government has attempted to reform the system, but in the most brutal and cack-handed way imaginable; they have simultaneously forced long-term claimants off benefits while cutting programmes that could help them into work. It's a shite state of affairs.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/c...