The financialization of everyday life has received considerable attention since the 2008 global financial crisis. Financialization is thought to have created active financial subjects through the ability to participate in mainstream financial services. While the lived experience of these mainstream financial subjects has been the subject of close scrutiny, the experiences of financial subjects at the financial fringe have been rarely considered. In the UK, for example, the introduction of High-Cost, Short-Term Credit [HCSTC] or payday loan regulation was designed to protect vulnerable people from accessing unaffordable credit. Exploring the impact of HCSTC regulation is important due to the dramatic decline of the high-cost credit market which helped meet essential needs in an era of austerity. As such, the paper examines the impact of the HCSTC regulation on sixty-four financially marginalized individuals in the UK that are unable to access payday loans. First, we identify the range of socioeconomic strategies that individuals employ to manage their finances to create a typology of financial subjectivity at the financial fringe. Second, we demonstrate how the temporal and precarious nature of financial inclusion at the financial fringe adds nuance to existing debates of the everyday lived experience of financialization.

Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) theory of social construction of target populations has received extensive scholarly attention. It has rarely been applied to populations of children and youth, however. In this article we: (1) describe the original framework; (2) apply each of Schneider and Ingram’s four categories to examples relevant to children and youth; (3) identify adjustments to the model to guide further understanding of young people’s policy treatment; and, (4) discuss how these observations might inform policies targeted toward children and youth. By providing a more focused analysis of this theory’s application to the social construction of children and youth, we aim to contribute to the scholarly understanding of policymaking and inform potential policy design strategies that may result in positive outcomes for children and youth.

The politics of parenthood is a major battleground in disputes about gender equality. In contemporary debates on parental leave reform, notions about ‘equal’ parenthood and parental ‘choice’ compete. Earmarked leave for fathers, the so-called ‘daddy quota’ – a hallmark of Nordic welfare states, is increasingly being discussed in other types of welfare state. Further increases in earmarked leave is thus of interest to the policy debate in other countries, too. This article examines the reception among political actors in Norway of a proposal in 2008 to divide the existing parental leave into three equal parts – one for the father, one for the mother and one shared at the discretion of both parents. Three rival ideational policy paradigms are identified: fathers’ right to care and mothers’ right to breastfeed compete among quota protagonists, while ‘choice’ is advocated by quota antagonists. So far, quota protagonists guided by the mothers’ rights paradigm have been the most successful, but persistent, ideational tensions are rendering future developments uncertain.

Dual or multiple earnership has been considered an important factor to prevent in-work poverty. The aim of this paper is to quantify the impact of second earnership on the risk of in-work poverty and the role of the tax-benefit system in moderating this risk. Our analysis refers to 2014 and employs EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union and the United Kingdom. In order to assess the role of second earners in preventing in-work poverty we simulate a counterfactual scenario where second earners become unemployed. Our results show that the effect of net replacement rates (i.e. the ratio of household income before and after the transition of second earners to unemployment) on the probability of in-work poverty is negative and statistically significant, but in relative terms it appears to be small compared to the effects of individual labour market characteristics, such as low pay and part-time employment.

This paper has two purposes. First, to explore what existing adoption legislation may indicate about the meaning and function of adoption practices in North America and Great Britain. Second, to consider some possible policy implications revealed by clearer understanding of the social meaning of existing adoption laws. The first part of the paper summarizes briefly the history of legal adoption. The second examines what is explicitly and implicitly revealed by adoption law and policies about the social purposes of adoption and about prevailing social values concerning the family. The third part examines possible avenues of policy change in North America.

New or increased charges to the users of the social services are likely to be considered with greater interest in our present economic situation. It seems an appropriate time, therefore, to ask what purposes direct charges are intended to serve and whether, in practice, they live up to these expectations. Admittedly, it may be misleading to refer to ‘purposes’ in this way, since they will be interpreted differently by different interests. But we may gain at least an idea of the range of purposes that governments have in mind by looking at the introduction, removal or variation of charges. The same might be done at the level of local government in those spheres where councils act independently. Proceeding in this way I suggest that five main purposes may be identified. Briefly, these are: raising revenue; reducing demand; shifting priorities; checking abuse, and a symbolic purpose. I shall say a little about each of them and then draw two sets of conclusions: one about the overall effect of charges and the other about the circumstances in which changes in charges are likely to occur.

There has been continuing debate ever since the reorganisation of social services following the Seebohm Report as to the most appropriate mode of organising field social work. At different times various models have been proposed with more or less enthusiasm, some of which expect fieldwork caseloads to be of a generic kind and others which demand a greater degree of specialisation. This paper examines the extent of specialisation in social work based on a national survey of fieldwork organisation and considers some reasons why this trend to specialisation is evident, even in authorities with a strong commitment to community-based modes of provision.

Although often neglected, the availability of employment opportunities is central to the effectiveness of active labour market policies. Employers play a crucial role in this policy field as they are both clients and co-producers of public employment services (PES). This study focuses on that relationship and reports qualitative research conducted in Tuscany (central Italy) from a street-level perspective. The findings show how public job-brokers manage this asymmetrical relationship and develop specific strategies to obtain employers’ cooperation and accomplish the PES mandate. The strategies identified here involve language adaptation, curricula “creaming”, and control of the bureaucratic procedure. These are shaped through a variable mix of four components that will be defined as relational, perceptive, technical, and tactical. This study contributes to the debate on activation policies, analysing in detail how PES frontline workers interact with employers, dealing with market logic in the public encounter.

This paper argues that analyses of the gendered character of welfare states should be broadened to include women’s share of board and executive roles, as well as the affirmative-action policies (e.g. gender boardroom quotas) that help to overcome the gender stereotypes (e.g. women are ‘nice’, men are ‘assertive’) and opaque selection procedures at the root of this. Such indicators may seem beyond the remit of social policy analysis, which is concerned foremost with the analysis of ‘social risk’. However, drawing on evidence from across multiple disciplines, this paper argues that achieving a ‘critical mass’ of women in board and executive positions can bring women’s issues onto companies’ agendas and lead to the adoption of female-friendly practices, policies, and cultures at the firm level. Crucially, these practices, policies, and cultures can help to reduce the incidence of gendered social risks (employment/care conflicts, economic dependence on a partner) and sexual harassment among women at lower levels of the labour market. Thus, the paper highlights another dimension to the social-regulatory function of welfare states which has to date been overlooked, namely legislative requirements on companies to achieve gender diversity in their leadership structures.

This article attempts to demonstrate how the community subsidizes a married couple in which the wife stays at home, through the combined effect of tax and social security privileges. Contrary to what might be thought, this system is not even really designed to protect ‘the family’: it operates irrespective of whether there are any children or not. It is in fact intended to reward the couple in which the wife devotes herself to looking after her husband. It is quite likely that women who go out to work (and who also do their housework) bear more than their share of the cost of this, because of the ‘overpayments’ that they are obliged to make in taxation and social security contributions. I propose that the system be abolished, as it corresponds to an out-of-date concept of marriage and has no justification from either the economic or the social standpoint. A housewife receives an income from her marriage and, if she actually does the housework, she improves the couple's standard of living. A number of working hypotheses are put forward in an attempt to see how the housewife could assume the normal responsibilities of a taxpayer and social security contributor.

It is impossible (a) to assess the value of the services provided by the housewife in her sheltered environment and (b) even to know for certain what she really does there (many housewives employ charwomen or au pair girls or even full-time servants). However, when it is a question of granting to a widow an income related to what she had when her husband was alive, she is entitled to a specified fraction – usually half – of what her husband received or would have received. If this principle is valid with respect to benefits, it ought also to be valid with respect to obligations. Thus, the main proposal made here is that the housewife should pay income tax and social security contributions on a fictitious amount equivalent to half of her husband's earnings; this amount would be treated as ‘earned income’, which is the most favourable assumption from her standpoint. At the same time, the husband would pay income tax and his own social security contributions on the whole of his own earned income, as he would if he employed a housekeeper. The above-mentioned fictitious amount would also serve as the basis of calculation of the housewife's entitlement to social security benefits, subject to redistribution so as to assure a minimum subsistence in case of need. Reforms along these lines could only be put into effect gradually, since it would be unjust to penalize people from one day to the next for irresponsible behaviour which they have been deliberately encouraged to adopt up to the present.

The post-Fordist welfare state thesis is premised upon the economic and technological changes seen in Britain and elsewhere over the last twenty-five years. Its regulationist variant though goes further and locates welfare shifts within a broader account of the transformed accumulation regime. This amounts to a useful intellectual framework within which to consider social policy developments.

This article however, argues that the post-Fordist case is ultimately misleading as it works with an overly restrictive picture of welfare and pays insufficient attention to non-class social divisions. It overemphasises historical disjunctures in the development of welfare and in doing so misses important areas of continuity. This is compounded by a linked tendency to assume rather than demonstrate the actual transformation of the various services. The evidence from education provides only limited support for the predictive aspects of the model. It also confirms the need for sensitive causal accounts of welfare change.

We elaborate Le Grand's thesis of ‘knights and knaves’ in terms of clinical excellence awards (CEAs), the ‘financial bonuses’ which are paid to over half of all English hospital specialists and which can be as much as £75,000 (€92,000) per year in addition to an NHS (National Health Service) salary. Knights are ‘individuals who are motivated to help others for no private reward’ while knaves are ‘self-interested individuals who are motivated to help others only if by doing so they will serve their private interests.’ Doctors (individually and collectively) exhibit both traits but the work of explanation of the inter-relationship between them has remained neglected. Through a textual analysis of written responses to a recent review of CEAs, we examine the ‘knightly’ and ‘knavish’ arguments used by medical professional stakeholders in defending these CEAs. While doctors promote their knightly claims, they are also knavish in shaping the preferences of, and options for, policy-makers. Policy-makers continue to support CEAs but have introduced revised criteria for CEAs, putting pressure on the medical profession to accept reforms. CEAs illustrate the enduring and flexible power of the medical profession in the UK in colonising reforms to their pay, and also the subtle inter-relationship between knights and knaves in health policy.

In recent decades, consensual approaches to poverty measurement have been widely adopted in large-scale survey research both in the UK and internationally. However, while ascertaining the extent of public agreement on the ‘necessities of life’ has been central to this approach, long-standing critiques have questioned the nature of public consensus on poverty derived using survey methods. By drawing on new primary research preparatory to the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, we consider the contribution of qualitative methods in understanding public views on necessities and discuss their implications for survey-based poverty measurement. Our findings raise some important conceptual and measurement issues for consensual poverty measures within large-scale social surveys. Firstly, our research suggests that public understandings of the term ‘necessity’ are diverse and may not always be consistent with researchers’ interpretations or with wider usage of this term within consensual poverty measurement. Secondly, a better understanding of the considerations which inform survey respondents’ deliberations is needed. Thirdly, our findings have important implications for how we should interpret the concept of ‘consensus’ within the context of consensual poverty surveys, and emphasise the need for the application of more deliberative methods in determining public views on the ‘necessities of life’.

This paper provides a case study of the involvement of carers in planning services for mentally handicapped people under the All Wales Strategy (AWS). After describing the structure for consumer participation in the AWS in Gwynedd, reasons for the low level of participation found are examined before considering what can be learnt from these early experiences. Major changes in the planning structure implemented after a review of the system are outlined. The paper ends with a discussion of the major operational principles which might underlie an effective system of consumer participation.

There has been an explosion of interest in the “four-day-week” movement across the globe, especially due to its potential in addressing many of the societal challenges left by the COVID-19 pandemic. Four-day-week is a movement set to shorten the working hours of full-time workers without a reduction in pay. I aim to set out the case for a national move towards a four-day-week explaining why social policy scholars should lead the debate. First, I provide evidence of the societal costs that the current long-hours work culture has on workers’ and their family’s well-being and welfare, social inequality, and social cohesion. Shorter working can help tackle these issues by giving workers right to time, shifting the balance between work and non-work activities in our lives and valuing them both. Social policy scholars need to lead this debate owing to our existing knowledge and expertise in dealing with these social issues and state-level interventions. In addition, without pressing for fundamental changes in our labour market, we cannot adequately address some of the key challenges we face as a society. The paper ends with key research questions social policy scholars should address as a part of this move.

Over the past two decades, the emphasis on paid work has become one of the defining features of social security policy in the UK. Lone mothers and their families have been one of the key groups affected. In this article we focus on the working and family lives of lone mothers and their children over time, drawing on material from a long-term qualitative research study, and setting this in the context of policy developments. We explore the long-term consequences of trying to sustain work, and manage low-income family life as children grow up and needs change over time. This highlights some of the tensions and limitations in family support and relationships when resources are limited. We reflect on the links between insecurity, legacies and the state.

This article examines the retirement savings behaviour of twenty-five 30-40 years olds automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme. Using qualitative interviews, the paper explores the interaction between savings motivation and willingness to adhere to, or deviate from, the pension scheme defaults. Integrating insights from different savings paradigms, including sociological approaches and behavioural economics, the paper highlights how social motives drove willingness to accept enrolment defaults. Participants’ reactions to the contribution defaults were motivated by a complex combination of factors including anchoring effects, the salience of ageing, and emotional responses such as pride, uncertainty and loss aversion. The author’s main premise is that greater attention needs to be given to the interaction between subjective feelings about saving for retirement and pension scheme design.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which education reform in Northern Ireland has developed along separate lines and to comment on the degree to which a part of the UK can move independently with respect to key social policies. The next section will examine in more detail the unique features of education in Northern Ireland, following which it will discuss the main elements of the legislation. In doing so, we will draw comparisons with the themes underpinning recent developments in Britain.

This study focuses on the organisation among poor households of rotating savings and credit associations locally known in Turkey as gün. Based on a longitudinal study of 17 households, the research demonstrates the distinctive ability of various güns to operate smoothly under inflationary conditions. Unlike the predominant portrayal of güns as a leisure activity for middle-class women, they are shown to act as a self-welfare instrument whereby poor households acquire the discipline of saving towards both their consumption and investment needs. Contrary to the conventional view, these households are found to use güns in circumstances where formal credit and savings options are available.