If the objective of creating a society with opportunity for all is to be achieved, understanding the roots and impacts of social exclusion is essential. This book is the most comprehensive attempt to examine the causes of social exclusion and the policies necessary to tackle it. It is based on...

A careful and precise presentation, from leading experts in the field, of the development of the welfare state in the UK. Looking at both historical processes and the welfare systems current state, these excellent contributors provide an authoritative analysis, packed with data. The United...

The Beveridge Report of 1942 captured the public imagination with its principles of universal social insurance in Britain. Beveridge's idea was to use universal benefits to remove the poverty caused by certain contingencies, such as unemployment or disability. This book considers the influence...

The term `social security' has a very different meaning in underdeveloped countries and is best understood as poverty alleviation. This book attempts to define social security in the Third World and to examine what sort of programmes are most suitable for developing countries. The authors review...

U.S. welfare reforms, whether promoting work first or human capital development, have had in common an emphasis on employment as the key to improving the life chances of children living in single-mother families. We describe in this article a different type of reform-a “third way” in welfare...

Cash transfers (benefits and tax credits) are crucial to the way that inequalities develop over time. This paper looks at how Labour's aims, policies and achievements on poverty and inequality related to its reforms of and spending on cash transfers. - Labour's aims for poverty and inequality...

The combination of spending cuts, efforts to protect the poorest from some of their effects, and 'localised' decision-making are leading to an increase in the numbers of means tests designed by lower level institutions. This paper examines a case study of the effects of this, looking at the...

This paper examines trends in the distribution of household wealth in Great Britain from 1995 to 2005 using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The data show that wealth is very unevenly distributed and reveal a widening absolute gap over the period between wealthier households and those...