Welfare states contribute to people's well-being in many different ways. One way of bringing those contributions under a common metric is in terms of ‘temporal autonomy’: the freedom to spend one's time as one will, outside the necessities of daily life. Using the 1999–2000 Finnish Time Use Survey, we propose ways of operationalising the time that is ‘strictly necessary’ to spend in paid labour, unpaid household labour and personal care; the residual, ‘discretionary time’, represents people's temporal autonomy. We measure the impact on that of Finnish taxes, transfers and child care subsidies. In so doing, we calibrate the contributions of Finland's Nordic welfare regime and of its female-friendly gender regime, in ways that correspond to the lived reality of people's daily lives.

The social risk literature examines the extent to which states have provided social protection against the ‘old’ social risks of the post-war era and the ‘new’ social risks affecting post-industrial capitalist states. In this paper the contingency of the provision of informal care to people aged 65 and over is discussed. The paper deconstructs the concept of social risk to determine the characteristics and processes which contribute to states recognising specific contingencies as social risks which require social protection. This conceptualisation is applied to make the case that care-related risks associated with the informal care of older people should be recognised and treated as social risks by states. Data from a qualitative study of the English care policy system provide empirical evidence that informal care-related risks are recognised, but not treated, as social risks in England. The findings reveal informal carers, and the older people they care for, receive inadequate and inconsistent statutory protection against the poverty and welfare risks they face. Furthermore the design and operationalisation of the English care policy system generates risks for care relationships.

This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure-agency problem’. An important contribution of this paper is to identify different forms of agency and discuss their implications. More specifically, we conceptualise three different types of agency in coping with hardship: absorptive, adaptive and transformative. Analysis of the findings indicates that structural constraints remain prominent. Most coping mechanisms fall under the category of absorptive and adaptive agency characterised here as burden-bearing actions that ‘conform’ to changing circumstances rather than shaping those circumstances.

Historically there have been three strands of policy concerning provision for young children. Nursery education has traditionally been provided for three and four-year-olds as a free, part-time, school based service provided by qualified teachers, and is regulated by education legislation. Childcare for working parents is a full-time care service for children 0–5 to cover working hours, provided by nursery nurses or unqualified care staff in a variety of private settings including domestic settings; finding and paying for this service has until now been the responsibility of parents. Childcare is subject to the 1989 Children Act and the regulation is carried out by social services departments. Welfare care for vulnerable children or children in need is provided for young children aged 0–5 referred by social workers to local authority social services or voluntary run day nurseries or family centres, and also regulated under the terms of the Children Act. All these policy strands are now under review by the government.

There are a number of local authorities, voluntary organisations and private firms who have attempted to provide nurseries which combine all three strands of nursery education, childcare and welfare for vulnerable children. This article draws on case study research carried out in 1995–97 on five such innovative integrated nurseries. The findings suggest that there are very different kinds of practices with children which go on in nursery education, childcare and welfare settings, and that these practices tend to persist even when the functions of the institution are broadened. The article concludes that a more fundamental analysis of daily practice in nurseries is necessary to underpin any policy changes.

Social policy research often depends on the application of generalisations from social science. Questions like ‘what works?’ assume that general principles can be translated from specific examples into other contexts. Pawson and Tilley argue that effective policy research has to depend on the idea of a ‘generative mechanism’, or relationships of cause and effect. Explaining issues in terms of causes, however, is problematic. Social phenomena tend to be multifaceted, and even relatively simple phenomena are likely to be influenced by a range of different factors; causal analyses have to be developed by interpretation, and the analyses are frequently wrong. Causal explanations often claim to do more than they can deliver: even if there is a convincing causal explanation, it does not necessarily imply any prescription for policy. There are ways of generalising, however, that do not depend on causal analysis. Phronesis develops principles experientially, setting them against empirical evidence, and it does not need to consider underlying mechanisms to be effective. Phronesis provides the basis for a critique of technocratic approaches, a rationale for action and a focus for the development of alternative methods and approaches. A dependence on phronesis cannot avoid all of the pitfalls associated with generalisation, but it is more flexible, and less presumptuous, than a causal approach.

By 1985 community care, of which the home help service is one of the cornerstones, was on the brink of a major change which would fundamentally affect targeting. The new focus is a concentration on those in greatest need, responsiveness to the needs of carers, and to the potential for the self financing of care. The analysis given here indicates that huge changes in targeting of the service will have been needed from the situation in 1985 to meet these new policies, changes which might be expected to move the service away from its traditional role of monitoring the very old living alone. Analysis of the period between 1980 and 1985, using the General Household Survey, shows that the targeting effect of new policies is not easy to predict. The slight increase in home care during the period did not reflect an improvement in targeting on the demonstrably most needy, but instead apparently spread the service more widely. Re-examination of equity, territorial and gender issues shows that only limited progress had been made. Indeed, gender discrimination may even have increased.

While the UK may not wish to go as far as some other countries in allocating community care according to fixed eligibility criteria, come what may, targeting concepts will be increasingly salient for monitoring the community care policy's achievement.

It is often claimed that before the NHS areas with the highest need for health care had the least provision. In other words, it is asserted that the so-called ‘inverse care law’ (Hart, 1971) existed. This claim is empirically tested for the hospital sector, using needs and provision data from a number of sources. It is found that, for the voluntary hospital sector, both beds and staff were inequitably distributed. However, for the municipal hospital sector, it appears that high need areas tended to have more beds and staff than low need areas. When both sectors are aggregated to produce total provision there is little association between need and bed provision, but inequitable provision for staffing. Thus, it is concluded that municipal provision was successful to some extent in rectifying the inequitable nature of voluntary provision.

In 2004, 9 per cent of female employees took advantage of the system of ‘career break’ or ‘time credit’ in Flanders, compared to only 3 per cent of male workers. Although the number of men taking a career break is increasing, they remain a small group. In this article the time use of men interrupting their careers full-time or part-time is compared to that of full-time working men, using representative time use data from 2004. Analyses show that a career break does not imply a reduced workload. Half of the men interrupting their career full-time do so to try out another job. Men who take part-time leave are mainly motivated by their desire for a better work and family life balance. About 80 per cent of the time they gain by working on a part-time basis is allocated to household and childcare activities. This suggests that encouraging men to work fewer hours could well be the best policy for achieving gender equality.

This paper explores the key features of the emerging welfare mix for Syrian refugees in Turkey and identifies the modes of interaction between humanitarian assistance programmes, domestic policy responses and the Turkish welfare system. The welfare mix for Syrian refugees is a joint product of humanitarian assistance programmes implemented by international and domestic non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and domestic social policy programmes. Three policy domains are considered: social assistance schemes, employment and health care services. The paper suggests that granting of temporary protection status to Syrian migrants in Turkey and the agreement between Turkey and the EU shaped the welfare mix by empowering the public sector mandate vis-à-vis the humanitarian actors. As a result, the role of the public sector increases at the expense of NGOs, especially in social assistance and health care, while NGOs are increasingly specialised in protection work (especially in mental health support), where the Turkish welfare system has been weak. Employment has been essentially disregarded, in both humanitarian and social policy programmes, which casts doubt on the prospect of successful economic integration. Finally, this paper argues that the convergence of the rights of immigrants and citizens may well occur in mature components of less comprehensive welfare systems.

In the digital age, financial inclusion continues to be connected to social inclusion. While most personal financial transactions are shifting from cash currency to digital transactions, we must ensure that marginalized members of society are not unbanked and excluded from financial opportunities. Many countries are declaring their intention to transform to cashless societies. India is one such country. As a case study, we investigated rural Indian villages that declared themselves as cashless to assess the financial reality of villagers. We conducted a survey of households (N=3,159) within villages across seven Indian states. In each state, we studied a village that was officially declared cashless and a nearby comparison village. Our findings suggest that the comparison villages did as well as the cashless villages, as financial inclusion via digital banking was minimal to nonexistent. Alongside significant state variations, we found that financial literacy and online access were the best predictors of performing any digital banking activity. This study concludes with a warning against rushing toward digital banking and the formation of cashless societies, as marginalized populations may be excluded.

The individual's commitment to work has occupied a central place in much welfare state research. This centrality relates to beliefs that welfare system design influences the ways in which people come to value employment. If, as believed, generous benefit systems diminish citizens' willingness to work, then these systems undermine both the legitimacy and the performance of the welfare state. This article explores change and stability in work commitment in a Norwegian cohort born between 1965 and 1968. We investigate whether and if so how individuals' experience with the welfare system and their personal, family or work experiences influenced their level of work commitment between 1993 and 2003, from adolescence to adulthood. Findings show work commitment as relatively stable across the ten years, with some individual-level change relative to changes in family life (such as becoming a parent) and in work experience (such as long-term unemployment). Results indicate that the fear of disincentive effects on individuals' work commitment is exaggerated.

A comparison of costs to the organization of alternative forms of care requires estimates for similar types of client. The degree of dependency is the main characteristic in which comparability is necessary with regard to services for the aged. This paper presents estimates of the costs incurred in providing residential care for clients of four degrees of incapacity for self-care – the capacity implicit in Bevan's residential hotel model of the old people's home, and three progressively more severe states of dependency. The estimates are for two cost concepts – average (unit) costs and marginal costs (the cost of caring for an additional person). The paper also estimates both long-run costs (costs that it is appropriate to take into account in decisions in which capital investment in new plant is being considered), and short-run costs (costs that it is appropriate to consider when the issue is the allocation of existing capacity between client groups). It also examines the consequences of the size of the home with regard to costs. Inter alia the paper shows:

(a) that the size of home beyond which costs do not fall with scale provides for as many as fifty places (equivalent to an average daily census of forty-six residents); and

(b) that, although the dependency components of costs are much smaller than the hotel components, dependency costs are large enough for it to be important to base comparisons of alternative forms of care on estimates of costs for clients which are comparable with respect to dependency.

The Australian income support system is often characterised as one of the most selective in the Western industrialised world. This paper examines the sense in which the Australian system is selective, and discusses the distinction between selectivity and targeting in income support provisions. Developments in social security outlays and recipient numbers over the last two decades are compared with those occurring since 1983, in order that the nature and impact of recent policies introduced to increase targeting can be identified. The analysis indicates that increases in recipient numbers have been the dominant factor underlying the past growth in social security expenditure. The distinction between selectivity and targeting of income support provisions is then explained with reference to the concepts of eligibility and entitlement. A framework is developed to illustrate how recent policies have restrained the growth in social security recipient numbers by policies which have increased income support targeting. These moves have not always produced a consistently more selective system of income support, an issue which is explored with the use of an index of the degree of selectivity of social security expenditures developed specifically for this purpose.

Housing allowances within the UK’s welfare system help protect low-income households from eviction. Universal Credit (UC) has faced criticism for threatening this with its long wait periods, increased conditionality and monthly direct payments. However, there is currently a lack of robust, national-level quantitative analysis on UC’s housing security impacts. This article addresses this, exploiting cross-area variation in the timing of UC rollout to assess its impact on landlord repossession rates within 323 English local authorities. A fixed-effects panel design was used, linking data from UC’s rollout schedule with Ministry of Justice data on legal repossession actions from 2012 Q1 - 2019 Q1. Results suggest that UC ‘Full Service’ rollout, on average, led to an increase of 1.74 landlord repossession claims, 1.42 landlord repossession orders and 0.70 landlord repossession warrants within local authorities (per 10,000 rented dwellings). This corresponds to a 4–5 percent increase on pre-rollout rates. UC’s impact tended to increase the longer it had been rolled out. Where ‘Full Service’ had been rolled out for 12+ months, it led to an increase of 2.60 landlord repossession claims, 2.89 landlord repossession orders and 1.09 landlord repossession warrants (per 10,000 rented dwellings), corresponding to a 6–10 percent increase on pre-rollout rates.

This article analyses critically the applicability of current theories of welfare state retrenchment to the 2004 public pension reform in Mexico, with the 1995 reform acting as a complementary case. In particular, this article contributes to the literature by analysing the reasons for which a potentially unpopular reform was successfully enacted. Available evidence suggests that – contrary to the existing literature's assertions – Mexican politicians responsible for the 2004 reform sought credit for these changes, rather than to avoid blame. Also, by presenting the reform as necessary to enhance socioeconomic equality, politicians were able to gather substantial popular support and defeat labour unions opposing this pension restructuring process. Hence, we propose that by framing the public debate as a matter of social justice, promoters of pension reform increased significantly popular support for the retrenchment of important benefits from a core group of civil servants, and successfully pressured Congress to promulgate this reform. We suggest that this created a reform path that will facilitate future efforts at reforming the remaining public pension schemes in Mexico.

The double crisis approach distinguishes two kinds of challenge confronting modern welfare states: long-term structural problems and short-term difficulties resulting from policy choices which affect the success with which the long-term issues can be addressed. Structural challenges include two main areas:

• • globalisation and technological changes demanding that governments direct attention to national competitiveness, and

• • population ageing, requiring more spending on pensions, and health and social care.

‘Community Cohesion’, and the apparent lack of it, was rapidly offered as the explanation for the 2001 disturbances across northern England, and has since become a cornerstone of government approaches to race relations policy. This article explores what Community Cohesion means to welfare practitioners in Oldham, one of the affected towns. Academic discussion of Community Cohesion has been largely hostile, focusing on the language and assumptions of the government reports. While highlighting important issues, these debates have been virtually free of empirical evidence on how Community Cohesion is actually being understood and operationalised by welfare practitioners. Drawing on in-depth research with youth workers in Oldham, I argue that the Community Cohesion analysis of the state of race relations is largely accepted, and supported, by those youth workers, and that it has enabled a significant shift in the assumptions and operations of their professional practice. Within this ‘modal shift’ in practice is a moving away from the language and assumptions of ‘anti-racism’, as it has been largely understood and operationalised by youth workers on the ground, towards what I argue can be seen as ‘critical multi-culturalism’.

This article discusses the implications of the decline of National Insurance in Britain, witnessed by its declining share of social security spending and steady dilution of the ‘contributory principle’ on which it was originally based. This decline is not accidental: under governments of the Left, arguments for inclusion have predominated, non-contributory benefits expanded and contribution conditions softened; under those of the Right, limited resources have been focused on the poorest through means-testing. From this starting point, the strong arguments in principle for social insurance look much weaker. However, there are also reasons why the system has not been swept away, notably the way in which most of it concerns already accrued state pension rights.

The effect of current plans for state pensions is to restore something closer to a flat rate state pension, but with significant complexity. The article suggests a way in which a more transparent system could guarantee a total state pension at a fixed percentage of average earnings. Other National Insurance benefits could either be separated from pensions and absorbed within other working age social security, or the scope of National Insurance could be maintained, but based on a test of participation, not past contributions.

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.