Within the European Union (EU) policy framework, individualisation is cast in terms of self-sufficiency and independence, and coupled to the market activation of all individuals and groups. How will this model be translated into European societies with different histories, policy environments and political actors? I analyse how an individualised system of benefits emerged in Sweden and was anchored in the broader social policy model and discourse of participation parity. Using the Swedish example, I map out the differences between individualisation, participation parity and gender equity, each representing models with different policy goals and outcomes. In the final section of the article, I focus on retrenchment and restructuring in the Swedish welfare state and its impact on the gender participatory model.

Conservative welfare state policies as in Germany often presume that money is a common resource within couples and, therefore, pooled. Research, however, indicates that money is increasingly managed separately or partly separately. This trend is either explained by the diversification of forms of relationships or interpreted as a general decline of the joint pooling of money. Contributing to this debate, this study investigates whether couples abandon independent money management when particular life events occur or when partners’ resources change. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 2004, 2005 and 2008 are used. Panel analyses show that marriage leads to joint pooling or partly independent money management. An increase in women's incomes, however, is associated with independent money management. Women's wish for independence apparently contributes to the decline of the joint pool. The substantial prevalence of financial independence within couples calls into doubt the adequacy of German welfare state policies.

This article analyses the specific ways in which Latin American countries have judicialised domestic violence over the last decade. In particular, it highlights the new definitions of spousal abuse and procedures adopted in both criminal and non-criminal courts. The region has seen two countervailing tendencies, the first to criminalise, through penal code definitions and higher penalties, the second to divert this offence into legal arenas that tend, either implicitly or explicitly, towards effective decriminalisation and downgrading of this form of social violence due to their emphasis on conciliation and transactional procedures. This has resulted, in many cases, in a two-track, hybridised treatment of domestic violence that is ultimately unsatisfactory in meeting the various needs of women victims.

This article focuses on two aspects of the real or imagined conflict between welfarism and consumerism; whether the experience of being a welfare user is somehow changed by living in a society in which people may see themselves less as workers and more as consumers; and whether the providers of welfare services and benefits can or should treat their users more like consumers than beneficiaries or even citizens with welfare rights.

Systematic accounts of East Asian government responses to the ‘limits of productivist regimes’ (Gough, 2004) remain surprisingly rare. This article develops three distinct types of East Asian welfare development, i.e. quantitative, type-specific, and radical, employing set-theoretic methods. It then uses these types to analyse six policy fields, including education, health care, family policy, old-age pensions, public housing, and passive labour market policy, in six East Asian societies: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. We find that all cases except Hong Kong and Singapore have experienced at least one radical shift in their welfare models over the past three decades (1990–2016). East Asian governments have increasingly combined quantitative expansion or retrenchment of ‘productive’ and ‘protective’ policy structures but have done so in unique ways. South Korea has followed the most ‘balanced’ approach to welfare development and stands out as the best candidate for further type-specific expansions moving forward.

Traditionally the factors affecting retirement are correlated with individual difference variables such as level of income, health issues and caring responsibilities. Studies have shown how these factors interact to predict the individual retirement process. However, the demand-side factors which structure opportunities for older workers have been somewhat less studied. This paper explores the employer role in retirement. By investigating the experience of employees and retirees from three organisations this article demonstrates that the employing organisation's policies and practices are key to understanding retirement transitions. In the conclusion the impact of forthcoming age discrimination legislation is considered.

Internationally, over the past two decades the theme of personalisation has driven significant reforms within health and social care services. In the Australian context, the principles of ‘entitlement based on need’ and ‘personalisation’ frame the proposed National Disability Long-Term Care and Support Scheme (LTCSS). In this article, we critically examine the interpretations and ambiguities of need and personalisation. We consider the administrative complexities of applying these principles in practice and the uncertainties about the roles of state and the market, and use individual case examples to illustrate areas of potential tension. Whether principles translate to deliver personalised services and avoid harmful trade-offs between access, equity and choice is the true test of social policy.

There is strong evidence linking adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and poor outcomes in adulthood both in terms of mental and physical health. Gaps in both the evidence base and research priorities still exist. These include understanding how to identify and assess risk in children who have experienced ACEs, and also the development and, importantly, the evaluation of interventions. Outstanding gaps include whether there are sensitive periods during childhood, the role of resilience/protective factors, the causal relationships, biological mechanisms and relative risk of ACEs for particular negative outcomes. ACEs affect individual children differently and chronic exposure appears to increase the risk of poor outcomes in adulthood, meaning interventions should also be tailored to the individual children, families and communities. Generally, there needs to be better evaluation of interventions and dissemination of this information to ensure that their use is evidence based. More input from affected communities, clinicians, funding bodies and Government departments is required to identify research priorities and ensure gaps in the evidence base are addressed.

This article sets out to investigate the political development and implementation of parenting support services in Sweden. The object of the analysis is on how parenting support has been organised and how it has been articulated in policy debates, and also key elements of parenting support in practice. The analysis shows that parenting support builds upon a century-long tradition of, for example, pre-emptive health care check-ups and services to parents, counselling and parenting education. There are, however, elements in parenting support policy which mark a clear deviation from this policy legacy. These include the introduction of structured parenting programmes, the growth of the idea of parents as autonomous beings, and the partial relocation of parenting support into new public health goals.

Feminists campaigning for the abolition of prostitution have long argued that it is men who buy sex, rather than prostitute women, who should be penalised and reformed. In recent years, the phenomenon of ‘trafficking’ in persons has provided feminist abolitionists with a more high profile platform from which to lobby on prostitution issues, and they have found policy makers increasingly receptive to calls to penalise men who buy sex. This has encouraged some feminist abolitionists to forge alliances with those who would more usually be viewed as ‘enemies’ of feminism and other progressive social movements (police chiefs calling for more extensive police powers and tougher sentencing policy, anti-immigration politicians calling for tighter border controls, and moral conservatives urging a return to ‘family values’). This paper is concerned with the dangers of such liaisons. It begins with a brief review of the findings of recent research on the demand for commercial sexual services, then puts forward some reasons why feminist abolitionists should be cautious about calling on the state to penalise sex buyers.

While young fathers have been neglected in social research in the UK, over the past fifteen years a small but growing body of empirical evidence has emerged across a range of studies. This review article draws selectively on this literature to document the characteristics of young fathers in the UK and their lived experiences. It presents compelling evidence for the desire of young fathers to be engaged as parents, despite the sometimes multiple challenges that they face. The article begins with a demographic profile of young fathers and documents what is known of young fathers’ relationships with their children, the child's mother and wider kin. It goes on to consider a range of practical issues facing young fathers. The article concludes with a consideration of young fathers’ support needs and experiences of professional support, drawing out the implications for policy and professional practice.

The main argument of this paper is that retirement will retain its importance over the next few decades, despite pressure from governments to encourage workers to delay leaving paid employment. Retirement may prove especially difficult to reverse among the ‘baby boom’ cohorts where an expectation of withdrawing from work at earlier ages has become entrenched. The article examines the policy context influencing current debates. It then reviews data on retirement attitudes and trends in the employment of older workers. The paper concludes by arguing for a ‘broadening’ in the social institution of retirement, with the development of new types of social engagement in formal as well as informal spheres of activity.

This article examines whether people aged eighty-five-and-over, referred to throughout as ‘The Oldest Old’, are more likely to suffer from social exclusion than people aged sixty-five to eighty-four. Social Exclusion is defined according to the four dimensions identified in the 1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey. Using data from Understanding Society, the analysis finds that the Oldest Old have a higher likelihood of experiencing social exclusion than people aged sixty-five to eighty-four. These findings illustrate the risks facing the Oldest Old, and highlight the policy challenges presented by ageing western populations.

Academic debate about social isolation and loneliness, and their adverse health and well-being implications, has resulted in many policy and programme interventions directed towards reducing both, especially among older people. However, definitions of the two concepts, their measurement, and the relationship between the two are not clearly articulated. This article redresses this and draws on theoretical constructs adapted from symbolic interactionism, together with the Good Relations Measurement Framework, developed for the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK, to challenge the way in which social isolation and loneliness are currently understood. It argues for a need to understand experiences of social relationships, particularly those which facilitate meaningful interaction, suggesting that opportunities and barriers to meaningful interaction are determined by wider societal issues. This is set out in a new conceptual framework which can be applied across the life course and facilitates a new discourse for understanding these challenging concepts.

Migration raises the question of how street-level bureaucrats treat non-citizens when it comes to the distribution of limited welfare resources. Based on a German case study, this article reveals how local social administrators rationalise practices of inclusion in and exclusion from social assistance receipt and associated labour market integration services for mobile EU citizens, who are perceived first and foremost as ‘foreigners’. The findings from fifty-five qualitative interviews with job centre representatives show how politics of exclusion are justified by nationalistic and ethnic criteria of membership. Insofar as EU migrants are considered outsiders to the imagined welfare community of their host country, they are seen as less deserving than German-born claimants. However, mobile EU citizens can earn their legitimacy to access benefit receipt through sustained participation in the host society, demonstrating knowledge of the German language and societal norms so as to appear ‘German’. Such a cultural performance-based logic of deservingness tends to be intertwined with nationality-based and racialising stereotypes of welfare fraud to frame exclusionary practice.

Tax is traditionally viewed as the main funding mechanism for government spending. Consequently, social policy is often seen as something determined and constrained by tax revenue. Modern Monetary Theory (‘MMT’) presents a reversal of the tax-spend cycle, by identifying a spend-tax cycle. Using the UK as an example, we highlight that one of MMT’s most important, but under-explored, contributions is its potential to re-frame the role of tax from both a macroeconomic and social policy perspective. We use insights on the money removal, or cancellation function of taxes, derived from MMT, to demonstrate how this also creates possibilities for using tax to achieve social objectives such as mitigating income and wealth inequality, increasing access to housing, or funding a Green New Deal. For social policy researchers the challenge arising is to use these insights to re-engineer tax systems and redesign social tax expenditures (STEs) for creative social policy purposes.

The policy process in the devolved Scottish system reconciles the Scottish themes of delivering social policy from the centre, through channels of advice and professional direction, and the New Labour theme of broad social policy strategies aiming at better service delivery and employment outcomes. Beneath the surface issues there is a trend to re-structure some services. The Scottish Executive's strategy Social Justice, set out in annual reports, relates devolved and non-devolved responsibilities in a way that has implications for the structure of Executive departments and the policy-making demands made upon civil servants. The research reported here uses interviews with officials to explore the structures of policy making in the Executive within a context of expectations about ministerial and official roles inherited from the previous administrative devolution.

Financial inclusion has arisen as an important social policy agenda over the past twenty years. A scholarly literature has emerged that is very critical of financial inclusion, seeing it as part of the financialisation of the everyday. Often, this theoretical literature makes little reference to how financial inclusion was developing in practice. Conversely, much of the policy literature does not refer to theoretical controversies about financial inclusion. The result is that the theoretical and policy literatures are developing in isolation from one another. This article suggests that it would be much better if there were greater mixing between these different literatures. The scholarly literature can inform the direction of policy and the applied literature can develop more nuanced versions of financialisation.

The concept of consumerism has multiple meanings, many of which are heavily value-laden; similarly, there are conflicting stereotypes of ‘the consumer’. After exploring the key dimensions of debates about consumerism and the consumer, this paper addresses some paradoxical consequences of the discourse of consumer empowerment in the field of health promotion and specifically in the ‘new public health’ movement.