The balance between private and public sectors in welfare activity in the UK has been documented by Burchardt (1997) and Smithies (2005) for three time periods; 1979/1980, 1995/1996 and 1999/2000. The existing evidence suggested that a welfare mix has previously been in existence but that the...

Discussion of pensions in Greece displays a paradox: reform is universally acknowledged to be important, urgent and mature, yet the political class avoid and postpone all discussion. This results in a syncopated reform path. A historical overview indicates that reforms are best understood as...

This article looks at the way in which the role of the state has evolved within different aspects of welfare activity (broadly defined) in the United Kingdom since 1979 and forward to the possible impacts of the plans of the Coalition government that took office in 2010 for changing that role...

Successive reforms enacted since the 1990s have dramatically changed Europe’s pensions landscape. This paper tries to assess the impact of recent reforms on the ability of systems to alleviate poverty and maintain living standards, using estimates of pension wealth for a number of hypothetical...

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 construction industry is important for Chinese rural to urban migrants. Over 90% of urban construction workers are rural migrants, and over a third of all rural migrants work in construction. The construction industry is not only particularly important, but is also different from other...

We assess measurement error in panel survey reports of social security benefit receipt, drawing on a unique validation study. Our aims are threefold. First, we quantify the incidence of measurement errors (under- and over-reporting). Second, we assess the extent to which this varies according to...

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,...

Cash transfers (benefits and tax credits) are crucial to the way that inequalities develop over time. This paper looks at how Labour’s aims, policies and achievements on poverty and inequality related to its reforms of and spending on cash transfers. - Labour’s aims for poverty and...

This article is a comparative analysis of the sources of income inequality in four countries, namely Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. It relies upon decompositions of inequality measures by population groups and income sources (except for Japan because of data limitations)....