The relationships between employment, education, opportunity, social exclusion and poverty are central to current policy debates. Atkinson argues that the concepts of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion are closely related, but are not the same. People may be poor without being socially...

This paper examines the extent to which the policies towards the welfare state pursued by the Labour Government in its first fifteen months represent a break with those of its Conservative predecessor and with earlier policies put forward by Labour in opposition. Four key parts of its...

This paper examines the decline of National Insurance in Britain, as witnessed by its declining share of all social security spending and the steady dilution of the "contributory principle" on which it was originally based. It argues that this decline is not an accident: under governments of the...

This paper takes as its starting point Henry Neuburger's injunction that taxation must be seen as a contribution to the maintenance of the welfare state, not as a dead-weight burden. It sets recent developments in the UK tax ratio in the context of changes in public spending, particularly on...

This article outlines the recommendations of the UK Pensions Commission, and the data and analysis on which they were based, including projections of demographic change, trends in private pension saving, and evolution of the state pension system. The Commission concluded that without reform,...