This paper reviews how income-support systems affect labour force participation in the UK. The UK's approach to social insurance is "basic security", with modest, typically flat-rate, benefits; insurance-based benefits are relatively unimportant. Compared with the EU, the UK has high employment...

The nation's best known welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was created to give widows and destitute mothers the means to stay at home and care for children. However, the entry of large numbers of American mothers into the paid workforce has created increasing tension...

The UK introduced its first nationwide programme of sickness benefits in 1948. It initially cost around £2 billion per year in today’s prices. The UK now spends over £37 billion annually on various disability-related benefits, a figure which is still rising. More than 5 million people are in...

We analyse the existence and underlying mechanisms of neighbourhood effects in welfare-to-work transitions. The analysis is based on Luxembourg social security longitudinal data, which covers the period 2001-2015 and provides precise information at the postcode level, corresponding mostly to...

An increasing proportion of people towards the bottom of the UK's income distribution are in a household where someone is in paid work. Working households comprised 37% of those below the official poverty line in 1994-95 and 58% in 2017-18. Much of that increase is due to trends that seem...

This paper reviews how income-support systems affect labour force participation in the UK. The UK's approach to social insurance is basic security, with modest, typically flat-rate, benefits; insurance-based benefits are relatively unimportant. Compared with the EU, the UK has high employment...