Social policy responses to the recent economic crisis have varied considerably across advanced capitalist countries. This study aims to explain this cross-national diversity through a qualitative comparative analysis of labour market policy responses to the Great Recession across eighteen advanced welfare states. The results of the study suggest that theories of welfare state change that attribute theoretical centrality to political and institutional factors do not provide a compelling explanation for patterns of labour market reform observed since the onset of the economic crisis. Rather, they appear to be explained principally in terms of the variable fiscal capacity of the state. In particular, the study findings indicate that the presence of fiscal crisis has acted as a necessary (but insufficient) condition for the presence of recommodification, while the absence of fiscal crisis has acted as a sufficient (but unnecessary) condition for the absence of recommodification. These empirical developments suggest that there is a need for a scholarly return to the problematic relationship between capitalism and the welfare state.

Owner-occupation is now an important source of wealth for many people. Housing has experienced price appreciation much in excess of most other assets over the last 20 years and, at the same time, owner-occupation has expanded dramatically. This paper first discusses the impact that this growth in popular wealth holding has had on the overall distribution of income and points to its great importance for all groups except the very wealthy. The importance of housing wealth to the individual is also discussed. Despite the importance of housing wealth, both at an individual and at the broader level, there is virtually no evidence on the transmission of wealth between generations for the mass of people with moderate wealth. This paper rectifies this by analysing the patterns of inheritance of housing wealth for a sample of estates in Glasgow. The evidence shows that wealth left by owner-occupiers is typically passed to a very small group in the close family. The amount of money received can be quite substantial, but tends to go to those in the same or the following generation, that is, people already in middle or old age themselves. Thus, housing inheritance is not likely to be passed directly to young, first time buyers, but to people who already have an established housing career.

Uncovering old or historical family secrets has become an enjoyable pastime yet in contemporary families the keeping of secrets, especially those relating to reproduction and paternity, is seen increasingly as undesirable. This article explores these issues and the growing tendency for family law and policy to favour exposing genetic truths – seeing this form of scientific veracity as crucial to child welfare and equality. The article explores the changing contexts of family secrets (using data drawn from the Mass Observation Archive) and seeks to locate these secrets in their cultural and historical context. An argument against imposing a simple solution (in the form of genetic truth) onto complex relationships is pursued.

This paper derives from a study of community food aid in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith city in the North of England. The paper begins to make sense of the diversity of types of food insecurity assistance, examines the potential exclusion of certain groups from receipt of food aid, and explores the relationship between food aid providers and the state. Faith-based food aid is common in the case study area, particularly among food bank provision to the most ‘destitute’ clients. While food aid is adopting service responsibilities previously borne by the state, this does not imply an extension of the ‘shadow state’. Rather, it appears reflective of a pre-welfare state system of food distribution, supported by religious institutions and individual/business philanthropy, but adapted to be consistent with elements of the ‘Big Society’ narrative. Most faith-based providers are Christian. There is little Muslim provision of (or utilisation of) food aid, despite the local demographic context. This raises concerns as to the unintentional exclusion of ethnic and religious groups, which we discuss in the concluding sections.

Social investment ideas are increasingly permeating social and care policy-making in Latin America. In this article, I analyse a variety of instruments which have been used to ‘invest in children’ across a range of Latin American countries to then zoom in on Chile, where early childhood education and care have attained a prominent place on the welfare agenda in recent years. This policy interest materialised in ‘Chile Grows With You’, an integrated child development strategy whose title resonates strongly with the global narrative on social investment. Engaging with the programme's aim of creating ‘equal opportunities from the cradle’, I discuss the transformative potential and the limitations of childcare service expansion in a highly unequal context.

Policies of citizen involvement in health and social care have given rise to a variety of organisational forms, which address citizens in different capacities and differ in their demands as to the representativeness, performance and competence of those involved. Apparently, the policies draw on different institutional logics. Based on extant studies, partly the author's own research from Norway, this article sheds light on three purposefully selected cases of citizen involvement. Two models of democratic consultation encompass a dominant model of involvement in Norway (advisory bodies of service users) and a model more prevalent in UK (panels of the general public). These are both embedded within a logic of democracy. A third emergent model of involvement is one in which citizens with experience as service users are engaged as workers in service providing organisations. This model resembles an idea of co-production. However, when involvement is organised as user-employment and paid work, the model rather seems rooted within the logic of the market – the labour market of service workers. The rise of this model suggests a shift in institutional embedding of citizen involvement. The analysis of these models provides a framework of distinguishing dimensions between different models of involvement.

This article explores some of the emerging tensions in the management of welfare in Britain. The success of Labour's proposals for welfare reform, particularly retirement pensions, hinges on their ability to promote the idea of the consumer citizen and to undermine traditional ideas of citizenship rights. However, managing this transition – including the presentation of ideas and the management of consumers – has not been straightforward. While the Government presents retirement as a matter of lifestyle choice, welfare ‘consumers’ are demanding more of their providers and are regularly disgruntled with the response.

Simultaneously, pension providers are expressing reservations about their ability to manage aggrieved consumers. Furthermore, they believe pension fund management has been politicised, and their scope for discretion reduced by regulation, while technical and scientific developments in terms of portfolio management and risk assessment have changed the working practices of those in the pension industry. These tensions between consumers, providers and legislators may generate further dissatisfaction with the balance of rights and responsibilities being hotly contested.

Previous research has suggested that hidden income arising from home ownership has important consequences for poverty measurement as it tends to favour certain low income groups, especially the elderly, and to have a moderating effect on poverty rates in countries with high levels of home ownership. This article explores both methodological and substantive aspects of this issue using data for 14 EU countries drawn from the European Community Household Panel Survey 1996. Methodologically, in the absence of data needed to estimate hidden income from housing directly, it explores the validity of using a housing expenditures approach to take account of the income effects of housing in a poverty measurement context. Substantively, it examines whether poverty measured in this way in the 14 countries in the data set differs in expected directions from poverty as conventionally measured. The substantive effects are found to be modest overall and to conform only partially to expectations. Certain methodological problems raise a question mark over these findings, such as variation across countries in the degree to which mortgage payments capture the cost of house purchase for home owners. The article concludes that the distributive effects of housing are important for poverty measurement but need to be better understood within each country before attempting cross-country analysis.

While there are feminists in other countries who would like to see the buying of sex made illegal, Sweden is indeed unique for having done so. Sweden's popular form of radical feminism has shown itself to be highly effective in mobilising support and creating a broad consensus on an issue which can be very divisive. This article outlines the Swedish debate about prostitution, to find out why legislation was passed which is barely on the agenda in other countries. While the strength and purpose of the women's movement was a key factor, others also played a part. The women's movement was itself rooted in a popular movement tradition that is particularly effective in influencing government policy. The link between drugs and prostitution provided both a rationale and a symbolic discourse for intervention. Fears about foreign prostitutes and liberal practices abroad played a part. Sweden's weak liberal tradition also made the advocacy of the liberal argument difficult.

This article argues that dominant paradigms in the study of social welfare have neglected the role of creative human agency in responding differentially to threats of welfare across the lifespan. This is due to the preference for unitary categories of analysis which place vulnerable individuals into homogenous groupings and to the tendency to work with limited models of vulnerability and helpseeking. These paradigms are further characterised by a preoccupation with pathological views of health and welfare and by inadequate conceptualisations of mediating factors and coping across the life course. A new paradigm of welfare is called for, the focus of which would be on the differential nature of vulnerability and risk among individuals and their differentiated reactions to threats to welfare. Directions for empirical research within such a paradigm are outlined.

This paper sets out a general framework for analysing long-term care (LTC) systems for older people in different countries and then applies this framework to a specific national setting. The paper considers the extent to which South Africa's emerging LTC system conforms to broader patterns observed across low- and middle-income countries and how far it has been shaped by more local effects. It finds that patterns of demand for LTC vary across different racial categories. Despite having lower rates of ageing that the white population, Africans account for the majority of LTC demand. Residential services cater primarily for older whites and there is a widespread perception that LTC for Africans should be a family responsibility. Across the sector there is evidence of gaps in service availability, limited state oversight and uneven service quality. In 2016 this led to a high-profile political scandal which may prompt more effective state responses to this growing societal challenge.

Is public support for redistribution affected by the number of people experiencing economic strain in a country? This question is investigated by comparing twenty-eight countries in the fourth round of the European Social Survey 2008–09 using two-level linear regression models. The results show that individuals reporting economic strain support redistribution more strongly than those who do not experience economic strain. Further, individuals living in countries where many other people report economic strain also support redistribution more strongly than individuals living in countries with less economic strain. The latter correlation is not explained by objective measures of the economic situation such as household income or the income dispersal of the country. The country-level effect of economic strain holds for all income levels. It is largely driven by a tendency to strongly believe in redistribution when living in countries of widespread economic strain. The results indicate that governments would receive more rather than less public support for redistributive policies during periods of economic strain.

Mentoring has recently taken centre stage as one of the primary criminal justice ‘interventions’ to reduce reoffending, having grown in popularity over the past fifteen years. Its rapid growth has been driven by claims of success within and outside the criminal justice system, leading some to argue that it has been perceived as a silver bullet (Newburn and Shiner, 2005). This article challenges such claims on three fronts: first, mentoring is an ill-defined concept with weak theoretical foundations; second, the evidence base upon which claims of success are made is limited; and, third, transferring mentoring into the coercive and punitive environment of the criminal justice system results in a departure from the very principles and values which are the basis of its usefulness elsewhere. The article utilises the findings from three empirical criminal justice research projects to question claims of widespread and effective mentoring activity with defendants and offenders, suggesting instead that ‘interventions’ described as mentoring serve as a vehicle to extend the reach of the criminal justice system. At the end of the article, we suggest that desistance theory, specifically the Good Lives Model, provides a conceptual framework for taking mentoring in criminal justice forward.

In 1969, the British Government established the Finer Committee to consider ‘the problems of one parent families in our society’. Its report, published in 1974, concentrated on the economic circumstances of these families, though it also looked at other issues including the welfare implications for children. Since then there has been further research in Britain focused on the economic circumstances of one parent families and continued interest in the health, welfare and development of children in these families. What was missing from the deliberations of the Finer Committee and is still omitted from subsequent research activities, is any substantial consideration of the health and welfare implications of lone parenthood for the adults involved. Yet such research is important. Firstly, one parent families are a numerically important group amongst British families caring for dependent children and it is predictable that they will continue to be so. Secondly, research into the social and economic circumstances and the health experience of lone parents, is also essentially research into the nature and causes of gender inequalities, because lone parents are disproportionately female. Finally, research into patterns of health and illness amongst lone parents would also be relevant to those planning a range of health and social services. This paper therefore seeks to contribute to knowledge about the health status of lone parents. Using data from a national annual household survey (the OPCS General Household Survey) we describe the subjective experience of health and illness amongst lone mothers and fathers. This is compared to the experience of parents in couple households and of different groups of lone parents according to sex, marital status, socio-economic circumstances and ‘normative’ gender roles in order to explore the relative importance of this group of factors in the aetiology of the patterns described.

The social investment approach has been advocated as a blueprint for recasting European welfare states since the years of the Lisbon Strategy. After the Euro crisis squeezed the fiscal space available for welfare recalibration, the question has been raised as to whether social investment could withstand the economic turmoil. Relying on a new welfare expenditure dataset constructed from various Eurostat sources, this article looks at the budgetary recalibration of 27 EU welfare states from the launch of the Lisbon Strategy to the aftermath of the Euro crisis (2000 to 2014). It compares the financial efforts that governments have put into social investment- and social protection-oriented policies, highlighting the different trajectories taken by EU welfare states at the crisis crossroads. Four scenarios for welfare recalibration are put forward, based on the social investment perspective and its critiques. The results show that the overall progress made by social investment in welfare budgets since 2000 came to a halt with the outbreak of the crisis. Bleaker scenarios materialised, whereas EU welfare states pursued retrenchment rather than investment, or had to face harsher budgetary trade-offs, expanding social investment to the detriment of social protection.

Among older men in England from 1971 to 1981 the increase in the extent of those defined as disabled was of the same order as the increase in unemployment. Using Census data for the forty-six counties of England, changes in disability, retirement and economic activity are related to changes in unemployment. A substantial proportion of the overall increase in disability and the decline in economic activity is attributable to the general rise in unemployment.

This paper examines the extent to which low household income influences access to primary health care in both the US and the UK. The basic approach is to ask whether, given data about a person's age, sex, and self-reported general health status and history, extra information about whether or not they come from a low-income household adds a statistically significant amount to the probability of their obtaining various amounts of primary medical care. The measure of primary medical care is derived from the number of physician visits and it, along with the other data, is drawn from the 1977 US National Medical Care Expenditure Survey and the 1980 UK General Household Survey. Although the two surveys cover different sample periods, they are similar enough to make comparisons between the two countries possible. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that low household income is not an important determinant of the actual use of primary health care resources. Only with subgroups of the low-income population (UK women and US relatively unhealthy individuals) does there appear to be a statistically significant effect, which is quite small in comparison to other factors.

Reform of the tax-benefit system is on the political agenda in the UK, following the election of a coalition government in May 2010. The proposals for a partial integration of the two systems, set out by the Centre for Social Justice in 2009, and endorsed by the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, have some features of a basic income scheme. This article explores some of the common origins of the basic income principle and the ideas informing the ‘Big Society’, and examines how both traditions opposed the social insurance approach to income maintenance. It asks whether this new reform initiative will discredit basic income, or usher in the principle by the back door.

This article argues that services have been under-theorised, in both welfare economics and social policy analysis. Programmes for opening up public services for competition and choice, and for widening the scope for ‘targeted’ services, treat them as analogous to goods. This ignores relational and contextual elements in human well-being, and the potentially crucial role of services in meeting such needs. The author calls for co-operation between economists and social policy analysts in filling this gap in welfare theory.

Despite the growth of cash transfers to reduce poverty, promote child and family well-being and women's empowerment, the gender dynamics and impact of social protection remains poorly understood. We hypothesise that poor female care-givers receiving a cash transfer for their children are better able to contribute to the material and social well-being of their children than female care-givers who do not receive a cash transfer. This paper reports results of a household survey in one of the poorest wards in Johannesburg, South Africa. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data. We found that cash transfers increase women's individual income, which is in turn positively associated with increased financial independence, decision-making power over financial resources and decisions about children's well-being. Beneficiaries were more actively engaged in care activities with their children. There are two implications for the insertion of gender and care into social protection policies. First that it is not necessary to attach behavioural change conditions to social protection policies in order to stimulate female care-givers to be more engaged in developmental activities with their children. Second, there is no risk of promoting a maternalistic model of care or ‘maternalism’ in the South African context as the transfer contributes to both women's individual incomes and their financial decision-making power.