Government support of private (occupational and personal) pensionsthrough the system of tax reliefs is large: between one quarter and onethird that of direct support of state pensions through public expenditure.However, it is regressive, lacks transparency and is difficult to control. Thispaper...

Since the mid-1990s the term and phenomenon of “social exclusion” has attractedmuch academic attention in the UK, and since 1997 has been an explicit focus ofgovernment policy. In a new book, CASE members examine the debate around themeaning of the term, and the extent and nature of problems...

Given the emphasis in recent welfare economics, political philosophy andsocial policy on the concept of opportunity, the need to find a way ofdifferentiating between outcomes that are the result of choice and outcomesthat are the results of constraint has become pressing. But all approaches...

Why is social exclusion a problem? What about ‘voluntary’ social exclusion –when an individual chooses to exclude him or herself from the wider society?Brain Barry has addressed these questions in a recent CASE book, arguing thatsocial exclusion, voluntary or involuntary, offends against...

The aim of this paper is to compare academic interpretations of the termsocial exclusion with the understanding of people with direct experienceof the phenomenon. A pre-selected group of residents of deprivedneighbourhoods were asked about various aspects of the concept andtheir responses...

This paper is an attempt to assess the extent to which the behaviour of anindividual is the result of the constraints that he or she faces – factorsbeyond individual control - or the result of the exercise of his or herpreferences. The study concentrates on participation or non-participationin...

This paper reviews the achievements of the Labour Government’seducation policy between 1997 and 2001. Tony Blair claimed that hisGovernment would make education a priority. The first part of thepaper reviews the scale of education spending in relation to theeconomy at large and within the...

This paper discusses the contribution made by American social scientists to thestudy of poverty in the past twenty five years. It has three parts. The firstconcentrates on the measurement of poverty and the fact that the US povertyline remained unchanged in that period despite its increasingly...

Area-based polices have become a significant part of the new LabourGovernment’s approach to tackling social exclusion. This paper reviewsthe long-running debate about whether area-based policies can make asignificant impact on poverty and social exclusion. There is a strongtradition of...

In the past decade there has been a minor revolution in how local services are funded.Those delivering the services now have their own budgets. How these budgets arecalculated – how Whitehall pulls the purse strings – are now central issues in social policy.In a new book, CASE members...