The Social Policy Digest went online in May 2002, and since then has become a major resource on UK social policy issues. By the end of 2008 it contained well over 20,000 entries, covering policy developments and research findings across the whole range of social policy fields.

This article revisits Titmuss's essay on the Social Divisions of Welfare (SDW) and reflects on its continuing relevance. Titmuss first presented the SDW in an Eleanor Rathbone Memorial lecture at Birmingham University in 1955, but it is best known from his Essays on the Welfare State published in 1958. Titmuss challenged the stereotype of ‘welfare’ as simply public welfare dependency and illustrated the different elements of the SDW. Some limitations of Titmuss's approach are identified, notably in relation to how he saw dependency arising, and revisions offered. The article provides a number of examples from the UK but also highlights some significant parallels with the SDW in the USA and Australia, the so-called ‘liberal welfare regimes’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Finally, it is claimed that 50 years on we need to be reminded of the insights and analytical potential of Titmuss's essay.

This article argues that existing typologies on production and welfare regimes should be combined into a typology unifying the study of production and distribution in advanced capitalist countries. The article utilises a principal component and cluster analysis to show that such a typology indeed reflects the empirical diversity of countries. This is further illustrated by a brief literature review of different typologies. It is then shown how the integration of the two approaches helps to resolve problems addressed in the new literature on the varieties of capitalism approach, notably how welfare arrangements relate to production systems. Thereby, the relevance of an integrated typology for policy-makers in the fields of welfare and production will be illustrated. Lastly, some thoughts follow on how an integrated typology allows for a perspective that explains the development of various welfare and production regimes based on the common historical heritage of families of nations.

This article suggests that an alternative to a social rights of citizenship approach to comparing welfare states is to use disaggregated programme expenditure data to identify the diverse spending priorities of different types of welfare state. An initial descriptive analysis shows that four major categories of social spending (cash spending on older people and those of working age; service spending on health and for other purposes) are almost entirely unrelated to one another and that different welfare state regimes or families of nations exhibit quite different patterns of spending. The article proceeds to demonstrate that both the determinants and the outcomes of these different categories of spending also differ quite radically. In policy terms, most importantly, the article shows that cross-national differences in poverty and inequality among advanced nations are to a very large degree a function of the extent of cash spending on programmes catering to the welfare needs of those of working age.

Scholarship in social policy in recent years has examined how policy positions users in a range of roles, particularly most recently in terms of their roles as ‘choosers’ through the increased use of markets in welfare. This article considers how choice policies have positioned users since the creation of the modern welfare state, presenting a history of choice policies, but also a comparative examination of how they have differed in the UK between housing, education and healthcare. It concludes by suggesting that although approaches to choice vary considerably between the three public services examined, policy-makers often appear unaware of these differences, leading to mistaken assumptions that policies can be transferred or transplanted unproblematically.

Most debate on home ownership and risk has focused on the management of mortgage debt. But there are other risks for home buyers in settings where housing dominates people's wealth portfolios: where the investment dimensions of property are at a premium; and where housing wealth is, de facto, an asset base for welfare. This article draws from qualitative research with 150 UK mortgage holders to assess the character, extent and possible mitigation of this wider risk regime. The analysis first explores the value home buyers attach to the financial returns on housing. Next we document the extent to which home equity is earmarked and used as a financial buffer. Finally, reflecting on the merits and limitations of this tactic, we conclude by asking whether – in the interests of housing and social policy, as well as with a view to managing the economy – there is any need, scope or appetite for more actively sharing the financial risks and investment gains of housing systems anchored on owner-occupation.

Lone mothers are a key target group for government policies to increase employment participation rates. Employment sustainability is central to achieving this goal and thus it is important to understand the factors that affect sustainability. When the lone mother starts work, her daily life changes in various ways, and so do the lives of her children, and perhaps also other family members who may become involved in childcare, or in other forms of help. These social relationships – at home, in work, in care settings, at school – may be a key element in employment sustainability, and one that has not yet been systematically explored in research. This article draws on data from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative study of lone mothers and their children, which has been following the families from the point that the mothers left income support and started working for at least 16 hours per week. The analysis starts from the assumption that sustaining work over time is a process that actively involves the family as a whole and not just the individual lone mother. In this article we explore how social relationships, inside and outside the family, are central to the ‘family–work project’ of sustaining employment.

Gender equity and its effects on fertility vary across socio-political contexts, particularly when comparing less with more developed economies. But do subtle differences in equity within more similar contexts matter as well? Here we compare Italy and Spain, two countries with low fertility levels and institutional reliance on kinship and family, but with employment equity among women during the 1990s slightly greater in Italy than Spain. The European Community Household Panel is used to explore the effect of this difference in gender equity on the likelihood of married couples having a second birth during this time period. Women's hours of employment reduce the birth likelihood in both countries, but non-maternal sources of care offset this effect to different degrees. In Spain, private childcare significantly increases birth likelihood, whereas in Italy, father's greater childcare share increases the likelihood, particularly among employed women. These results suggest that increases in women's employment equity increase not only the degree of equity within the home, but also the beneficial effects of equity on fertility. These equity effects help to offset the negative relationship historically found between female employment and fertility.

This article achieves two objectives. It introduces new insights to current thinking on social policy in the Middle East based on a case study of religious welfare in Lebanon. This in turn provides an analysis of how faith-based welfare may connect to social policy more broadly. Focusing on how five of the most prominent Lebanese Muslim and Christian welfare organisations engage with poverty reduction, the article draws attention to the moral dimension of social policy-making. This is illustrated by an analysis of how the Lebanese faith-based organisations (FBOs) define the objects of their interventions and, subsequently, how appropriately they respond to the causes of social problems. The analysis also includes a review of the FBOs' evaluation of their services. The overall argument of the article comments on the extent to which social welfare in Lebanon has scope to act beyond short-term, instrumental or politicised goals. It argues that human need, the ‘social case’ and poverty are three core concepts which determine the design of social interventions, but they also serve to confuse the definition of the object of social policy. The argument concludes that needs interpretation by welfare service providers in Lebanon is the site of deep contention in the policy-making process, since the lack of clarity in defining the object of policies can hamper the effectiveness of services. This means that while the social action undertaken by FBOs in Lebanon is more complex than the private or corporate charity initiatives known in the British or North American faith-based contexts, religious welfare programmes in Lebanon are more focused on palliative in-kind services.

While both migration and welfare states are popular topics of research, the intersection between them is rarely studied. In this article, we present the findings of a study that explored migrant workers' conceptualisation of ‘social protection’ and their relationship with the Irish welfare state. The main foci of analysis for the purposes of this article are the migrant workers' understandings, experiences and expectations regarding their social protection and the welfare state. While our findings hint at the presence of many migrant workers who are very poorly anchored into and even completely detached from the Irish welfare state, they also reveal complex and ambivalent attitudes towards component parts of the social protection system. While the findings presented here stem from a qualitative study in a single country, we hypothesise that similar patterns can be identified among the migrant populations in other, particularly liberal, welfare states.