This paper contributes to debates on economic inequality and ethnic and racial dimensions of social policy by focusing on the US racial wealth gap and assessing in what ways the private wealth management industry has contributed to this gap and reinforced white supremacy. The combined effects of the private wealth management industry reproducing whiteness and the industry being embedded in whiteness act as a barrier to developing a wider understanding of the savings and investment behaviour of people of colour. The paper addresses the role of public policy in closing the gap for investment advice, whether it should become a direct provider, or a facilitator to encourage the wider engagement of existing market participants.

This article takes a health assets approach to extract policy lessons for Ghana’s present Child and Family Welfare Policy, introduced in 2014. We examine the role of Ghanaian adolescents’ socioeconomic status and family social capital in their subjective well-being using data obtained from a representative survey of adolescents (aged 13-18 years) in Ghana’s Upper West Region. Our empirical results revealed that various sub-components of family social capital, including family sense of belonging, autonomy support, control, and social support, varied with adolescents’ self-reported life satisfaction and happiness after controlling for their family socioeconomic status and other personal characteristics. Once family social capital was controlled for, socioeconomic status explained adolescents’ life satisfaction, but not their happiness. These findings confirm existing studies suggesting that family social capital can function as a protective ‘safety net’ for adolescents with low SES in the specific Ghanaian context. Consequently, this study contributes to the literature by arguing that, in order to develop Ghana’s Child and Family Welfare Policy further, adolescent ‘social empowerment’ ought to be accentuated alongside its current focus on enhancing household ‘economic empowerment’ via social protection interventions.

This study explores the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of gender mainstreaming logic, paying special attention to women's bureaux in Korea. In response to international pressures for gender mainstreaming, the Korean government has established or relocated women's bureaux since the 1990s. At first glance, it appears that the government in Korea has been keen to integrate gender issues into the entire policy process. However, closer investigation draws a very different picture. Qualitative findings from interviews with civil servants in Korean women's bureaux show that the bureaux are characterised by ‘institutionalised powerlessness’ in terms of peripheral structural arrangements, visible and invisible resistance from inside and outside government bureaucracy, and a lack of staff commitment. Therefore, it is hard to draw the conclusion that gender mainstreaming via the systematisation of women's bureaux would ever go beyond symbolic gestures in Korea.

There is a long tradition in the assessment of UK social policy of examining benefit entitlement and access, yet little attention has been paid towards benefits associated with bereavement and, in particular, what happens for those people who cannot afford a funeral and require state assistance. This is despite the fact that every year approximately one in ten deaths in the UK results in a claim to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Funeral Payment for a contribution towards funeral costs. Beyond a paper in this journal over ten years ago, no research has been conducted into how the scheme is administered and what happens to those people who claim. Drawing on a study with both successful and unsuccessful Funeral Payment claimants, funeral directors and key stakeholders, this paper evaluates the Funeral Payment in terms of eligibility and entitlement, and timing and cost. It argues that closer attention needs to be paid to the issue of financial support for funerals to avoid the evolution of an unwieldy system at a time when the UK death rate is predicted to rise owing to the ageing of the population.

Since the birth of the National Health Service in 1948 there have been periodic discussions of the potential role of pricing and insurance in the United Kingdom health care system. This article is concerned with discussing the problems inherent in these mechanisms and it advocates more careful articulation of the cost and benefits of such policies. The first section gives a description of some quite recent proposals to extend the role of the pricing and insurance mechanisms which have been made by the British Medical Association and the McKinsey consultancy company. The second section uses economic analysis to show that both the pricing and the insurance mechanisms have inherent problems which may vitiate their efficiency in many western health care markets. The third section is concerned with the mechanisms by which the efficiency of the health care system can be improved, and radical experimentation is advocated. Without radical experimentation and the implementation of suitable incentive systems, inefficiency and inequality will continue in the National Health Service.

The rise of flexible employment in advanced democracies has been predominantly studied in the insider-outsider framework of the dualization literature. However, against the background of rising income inequality, it seems questionable to assume that all labor market insiders are equally affected by flexibilization. This paper explores whether flexibilization increases wage inequality among labor market insiders. I argue that flexibilization exposes insiders to a set of wage risks that are concentrated among low- and middle-income insiders, creating downward wage pressure on those insiders. The empirical analysis, covering 22 democracies between 1985 and 2016, finds that the deregulation of non-standard employment is associated with declining wage shares of low-income and middle-income earners, while top earners benefit. These major distributional shifts imply an important qualification of the dualization literature: rather than pitting insiders against outsiders, flexibilization ‘at the margins’ seems to exacerbate divides among insiders.

This paper explores third sector organisational experiences of governmental policy change and implementation. Using a four-year longitudinal study of 13 third sector organisations (TSOs), it provides evidence based on the experiences of, and effects on, third sector organisations involved in the UK's Work Programme in Scotland. The paper explores third sector experiences of the Work Programme during the preparation and introductory phase, as well as the effects of subsequent Work Programme implementation. By gathering evidence contemporaneously and longitudinally a unique in-depth analysis is provided of the introduction and implementation of a major new policy. The resource cost and the challenges to third sector ways of working, for the organisations in the Work Programme supply chain, as well as those not in the supply chain, are considered. The paper considers some of the responses adopted by the third sector to manage the opportunities and challenges presented to them through the implementation of the Work Programme. The paper also reflects on the broader context of the employability services landscape and raises questions as to whether, as a result of the manner in which the Work Programme was contracted, there is evidence of a move towards service homogenisation, challenging perceived TSO characteristics of service innovation and personalisation.

In The Pinch, David Willetts (2010: xv) attracted attention by asking whether ‘the boomers have been guilty of a monumental failure to protect the interest of future generations’. This was just the latest contribution to a long running concern of social policy analysts about horizontal equity and generational fairness. Using OECD data from 1980–2007, in the first part of this paper we show that there is no evidence that social expenditure has been shifting in favour of the retired at the expense of children, except perhaps recently in some Nordic countries. For the UK, we have created a time-series using the published articles since 1977 and the micro data sets since 1994/5 from the annual Office for National Statistics analyses of the Effect of Taxes and Benefits on Household Incomes and used it to analyse trends in the redistributive impact of cash benefits, direct and indirect taxes and services on the retired and households with children and across the income distribution. The analysis shows how the relative support for the retired versus children has changed over time, which elements have contributed to the changes and for which part of the income distribution. There has been a small shift in final income in favour of the retired but it was not the result of changes in taxes, benefits or services in kind but rather a change in the original income distribution in favour of the retired.

Activation reforms targeted at single parents simultaneously construct them as a legitimate target for activation policy and subject them to new obligations to engage in paid work or education/training. The social policy literature has established that the work of ‘making-up’ target groups occurs at the street level as well as in government legislation. The street level has become even more significant in recent years as there has been a shift towards establishing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programmes and organising these around the principles of performance pay and process flexibility. However, what is largely missing from the existing literature is an analysis of how contract conditions, together with individuals' activation obligations, shape how they are targeted at the street level. Drawing on a study conducted over eight years with agencies in Australia's quasi-market for employment services, this paper argues that the changes to the contracts for governing this market changed how Australian single mothers were targeted by employment services. Over time there was a shift away from making-up single-parent clients as a distinct, vulnerable target group and a shift towards viewing them in terms of risk categories described within the agencies’ contracts.

The basic thesis of this paper is that a necessary condition for the re-establishment of full employment without a runaway inflation is a change of attitudes and institutions concerning wage-fixing which puts more emphasis on the effects of rates of pay on the expansion of employment opportunities and much less emphasis on their effects on the real incomes of those already in employment. A necessary condition for such changes would be to develop further fiscal and social welfare measures to promote an acceptable distribution of income. Unfortunately it is possible that two very desirable developments — namely, labour participation in decision-making in industry and the introduction of new technologies — may make this particular wage-fixing problem more, rather than less, acute. The reforms discussed to meet this problem cover: the use of Keynesian demand-management policies to keep the money national income on a steady but moderate growth path; measures to restrain the setting of monopolistic practices by trade unions; a system of national arbitration and a possible inflation tax to curb excessive wage increases; an integrated reconstruction of social benefits and direct taxation; the substitution of expenditure instead of income as the basis of a progressive direct tax; the possible introduction of an annual wealth tax; and the reform of capital transfer tax to fall progressively on the beneficiaries of gifts and bequests.

For over 15 years the Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp has been involved in research on social security. More specifically, it has tried to develop research methodologies which would make it possible to quantify the adequacy of the social security system in Belgium, and to assess its impact on the income of households. The first part of this article provides a broad outline of the social security system in Belgium. The second and major part presents the main results of the research. The same methodology and the same standardised presentation of results is currently being used in a comparative study financed by the Commission of the European Community and undertaken by research groups in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Ireland, Spain and Greece.

In recent years ‘social enterprises’ have become important partners in the delivery of key public services such as healthcare. However, little is known about how healthcare social enterprises contribute to public service provision in the health sector. We analyzed 172 social enterprises from four continents involved in healthcare to assess the types of interventions, processes, and roles they play responding to rapidly evolving healthcare systems. We found that they are engaged broadly in three dimensions of health service provision: improving access to health services; improving the quality of health services; and building public health capacity. We contribute to social policy theory by enhancing understanding of the micro-level interventions of social enterprises in the healthcare sector and articulating new dimensions of NPG that include co-innovation, co-lobbying, and co-integration in the context of healthcare.

Taking China as a critical case, this article questions recent literature that asserts that shame attached to poverty is both ubiquitous and always problematic. In China, the concepts of shame, loss of face, lian (integrity) and mian (reputation) once provided an ethical framework under which the existence of poverty both indicated ineffective governance and provided individuals in poverty with opportunities to demonstrate virtuous behaviour in coping with life’s hardships. Maoist rhetoric went further presenting poor peasants as national heroes albeit the outcome of Maoist policies was often to hurt the most disadvantaged most. Subsequent marketisation has transformed poverty into a manifestation of personal failing with poverty-related shame having the same likely negative consequences as found elsewhere.

Raising employment has been at the heart of EU strategies for over twenty years. Social investment, by now a widely debated topic in the comparative welfare state literature, has been suggested as a way to pursue this. However, there are only a couple of systematic comparative analyses that focus on the employment outcomes associated with social investment. Analyses of the interdependence of these policies with regard to their outcomes are even more scarce. We empirically analyse the extent to which variation in employment rates within 26 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010 can be explained by effort on five social investment policies. We additionally explore the role of policy and institutional complementarities. Using time-series cross-section analyses we find robust evidence for a positive association between effort on ALMPs and employment rates. For other policies we obtain mixed results. ALMPs are the only policies for which we observe signs of policy interdependence, which point at diminishing marginal returns. Additionally, our analysis demonstrates that the interdependence of social investment policies varies across welfare state regimes. Together, this indicates that the employment outcomes of social investment policies are also contingent on the broader framework of welfare state policies and institutions.

A planner should be aware of alternative social goals of housing planning. For example: to encourage frequent contacts and manifest neighbourliness, or to plan for maximum privacy; to strive for ethnic integration through ethnically mixed housing or to let people live close to those who resemble themselves, as they usually prefer. The selection of social goals involves value judgements, but opinions differ about the question of whose values should be considered in this decision process.

Once the basic value judgements are made and the social goals selected, the planner looks for ways to realize the goals. This paper surveys sociological studies which define some of the relevant factors and provide guidance concerning social conditions in which physical planning can contribute to the realization of selected goals.

During an era of welfare retrenchment in the United States, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Lifeline Universal Telephone Service evolved from residual means-tested programs to significant social policies. The cases demonstrate the opportunity points for social policy innovation that exist in the political climate of economic liberalisation. The essay describes patterns that do not simply prevent retrenchment but hint at politically advantageous policy designs that permit social policy expansion in the US welfare state context. I label this policy-making strategy stealth welfare. Moreover, by considering programs like Lifeline service the article draws attention to the evolving nature of social policy in advanced industrial economies.

This article examines young people’s experiences of open access youth work in settings in the UK, Finland, Estonia, Italy and France. It analyses 844 individual narratives from young people, which communicate the impact of youthwork on their lives. These accounts are then analysed in the light of the European youth work policy goals. It concludes that it is encouraging that what young people identify as the positive impact of youth work are broadly consistent with many of these goals. There are however some disparities which require attention. These include the importance young people place on the social context of youth work, such as friendship, which is largely absent in EU youth work policy; as well as the importance placed on experiential learning. The paper also highlights a tension between ‘top down’ policy formulation and the ‘youth centric’ practices of youth work. It concludes with a reminder to policy makers that for youth work to remain successful the spaces and places for young people must remain meaningful to them ‘on their terms’.

Service providers in Western welfare states have to engage with an increasingly differentiated citizenry. The arrival of new migrant communities triggers debates, negotiations and struggles over the needs of these communities and how service providers can engage with them. In this paper, we look at these processes of developing local social inclusion policies that target migrant communities through the perspective of Nancy Fraser's ‘politics of need interpretation’. More specifically, we analyse Roma engagement strategies in Manchester. We do so by reconstructing how the presence of Romanian Roma emerged as a public issue leading to various engagement strategies and how different actors competed over the interpretation of the needs of the Roma community and the best ways to respond to them. We use Fraser's notion of ‘parity of participation’ to draw attention to the position of the Roma community itself in the process of interpreting needs.

The New Labour government has set a target of getting 1,000,000 more people aged 50 and over (50+) back into work as part of its aim of achieving an overall employment rate of 80 per cent among people of working age. To this end, a variety of policies have been introduced to encourage citizens to work later in life, notably the 2006 Age Regulations. However, much of the government's analysis is based on supply-side reasoning that has retained its credibility only because of the rise in older people's employment rates that has taken place since 1994. This article focuses on the employment problems of older men, since their employment rates have fallen sharply since the 1970s. Examination of both the history of retirement and less favourable underlying economic trends suggests that extending the working lives of older men may not be easy.