The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act(PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state.One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with youngchildren, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concertwith a strong...

Economic evaluation has an important role in helping to make decisionsabout the use of scarce resources in an explicit and rational manner, yeteconomic evaluation is not well-developed in many areas of socialwelfare. This paper looks at the reasons for this, focusing on whateconomists could do...

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

This paper attempts to clarify the significance of reforms to disabilitybenefits proposed by the New Labour government in 1998, by settingthem in the context of the development of disability benefits since theearly 1970s. The first section charts the creation, extension andsubsequent series of...

This paper analyses the proposals contained in the Government GreenPaper, A New Contract for Welfare: Partnership in Pensions for low paidworkers and the potential of the new rules to guarantee a decent incomein old age. It discusses the general principles inherent in the design ofthe British...

This paper examines the impact of the transition from a planned toa market economy on living standards and welfare in the fiveRepublics of former Soviet Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, along with the Republicof Azerbaijan. A broad definition of...

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...