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 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...

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...

That Britain became more unequal in the last quarter century is well known; the scale of change, less so.At the end of the 1970s, the richest tenth received 21 per cent of total disposable income. This rose to 28-29per cent by 2002-03, as much as the whole of the bottom half. More than half of...

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...

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...

John Hills and Orsolya Lelkes have analysed results from the National Centrefor Social Research’s 1998 British Social Attitudes survey on public attitudes toredistribution and social security benefits and at how these relate to currentgovernment policies.There is a persistent public appetite...

[...]The work of the National Equality Panel will underpin the response by all strategic publicauthorities to Clause One of the Equality Bill which places a new legal duty on key publicbodies to consider, in all the important decisions they make and all important actions theytake, how they can...

The last year has seen a transition inCASE’s activities, with the completionof our long-term programme for theEconomic and Social Research Council(ESRC) in January, results from whichwere brought together in a conferenceto celebrate the Centre’s tenthanniversary in January, with...

This report was commissioned to help the Secretary of State for Communities and LocalGovernment “stand back and ask what role social housing can play in 21st Century housingpolicy”. Its aim is to provide the background and analytical framework against which theimplications of different...