This paper examines the extent to which the policies towards thewelfare state pursued by the Labour Government in its first fifteenmonths represent a break with those of its Conservativepredecessor and with earlier policies put forward by Labour inopposition. Four key parts of its inheritance...

This paper is an overview of the social welfare systems of five EastAsian countries, namely Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong andSingapore. It analyses the overall costs of welfare as well as incomedistribution aspects, based on both aggregate data and a programme-byprogrammereview of their...

The principal aim of Section F of the British Association is to show how economicanalysis can be applied to illuminate important issues of public concern. The themefor the 1997 Section F Meeting of “Equality and Opportunity” surely satisfied thiscriterion. The subject matter is highly...

This paper develops a typology of welfare services and attempts toillustrate its use in clarifying discussions about the privatisation ofwelfare and in analysing changes in expenditure. A third dimension,which concerns the extent of the consumer’s decision-making power andturns on the question...

This study addresses three questions. Firstly, to what extent does divorceduring childhood have long-term consequences for the educationalattainment, economic situation, partnership formation and dissolution, andparenthood behaviour in adulthood? We show that in most of thesedomains children who...

The background to the Report is the public policy debate about the introduction of a Bill of Rights or written constitution that would build on the Human Rights Act (HRA) (1998) and further strengthen human rights protection by codifying new, additional and / or strengthened rights including...

Poverty Street draws on evidence from twelve of the most disadvantagedneighbourhoods in England and Wales, using Census data from 1971, localadministrative data from 1998 onwards, and over 400 interviews conducted in 1999 and2001.The neighbourhoods have multiple problems - unemployment three...

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...

Martin Evans has examined the organisation, targeting and implementation ofwelfare to work programmes in five countries: the UK, France, Germany,Netherlands and the USA. His study focussed on the different definitions of targetpopulations for welfare to work abroad and how their programmes were...

Katharine Mumford reports on her first round of interviews with 100 familiesliving in two East London neighbourhoods. CASE’s qualitative, longitudinalstudy in low income areas seeks to understand area change from theperspective of families, and to uncover the significance of area conditions...