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...

This paper assesses the extent to which the behaviour of an individual is the result of the constraints that he or she faces, or the result of his or her preferences. It concentrates on participation or non-participation in employment. Following a discussion of potential methodological...

This paper is an attempt to assess the extent to which the behaviour of an individual is the result of the constraints that he or she faces – factors beyond individual control - or the result of the exercise of his or her preferences. The study concentrates on participation or...

This CASEbrief summarises findings from CASEpaper 40, Constraint and opportunity: Identifying voluntary non-employment by Tania Burchardt and Julian Le Grand

Government policies on disability – and criticism of them – rest in parton an understanding of the circumstances of disabled people informedby cross-sectional survey data, dividing the population into “thedisabled” and “the non-disabled”. While conceptual debates about thenature of...

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 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...

[...]The research on which this report is based used both qualitative and quantitativemethods. In the first phase, a small number of semi-structured interviews were carriedout with people who were juggling work and family responsibilities, and who feltunder both time and income pressure. These...

The majority of disabled people experience the onset of their health problem or impairment inadulthood. According to a survey carried out in the mid-1990s, 11 per cent of disabled adultsof working age were born with a health problem or impairment, 12 per cent became disabledduring childhood, and...