The global shift towards the market in the provision of social security is typically associated with the values of the New Right, but we take issue with this view. An examination of the main welfare ideologies that have influenced the development of contemporary social security systems suggests...

Purpose – According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has been informed by neoliberalism, and has thus been an integral element of a broader program of welfare retrenchment, which is inconsistent with social cohesion. The paper aims to take issue with...

<p>This article takes issue with the neoliberal conception of justice that has informed much of retirement pension policy in recent decades. Drawing upon an appraisal of a spectrum of liberal philosophical perspectives, it develops an evaluative framework that specifies the appropriate normative...</p>

<p>Mark Hyde and John Dixon review Shapiro's (2007) <em>Is the Welfare State Justified?</em>, assessing its merits as well as its flaws.</p>

The development and electronic accessibility of indices of poverty and social deprivation have yet to be fully exploited by mainstream sociology, not least in the field of class analysis where it might seem likely to be taken up. While reasons for this can be suggested, there are several...

Purpose – For much of the scholarly literature regarding retirement, private pensions are incapable of engaging the trust of those who depend on them. However, this appraisal is flawed by its one-dimensional emphasis on the importance of social solidarity to trust. The purpose of this paper is...

The 1944 Disabled Persons (Employment) Act introduced a range of programmes to help disabled people find and keep paid work but, until recently, little was known about their effectiveness. This paper reports the findings of a survey of economically active disabled people and shows that their...