This article presents a case study of income redistribution in South Korea. By analysing the most comprehensive household income survey (National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure), it identifies a growing sign of change regarding the extent to which social security is beginning to play an important role in reducing income inequality. Nonetheless, it argues that its impact is yet to be sizeable enough to make a significant difference and, still further, that social security is of little use in terms of mitigating increasing inequality of original incomes which comprise the largest part of gross income.

This paper uses the living standards method to estimate the extra costs for older people with functional disabilities in urban areas in Northern China. The research finds that the cost for older people who live alone is higher than those who live with other family members, and their living standard is lower. The costs increase with the age, especially for the oldest old people who live alone. The cost for older women is higher than their male counterparts. The extra costs of support for people with functional disabilities decrease the overall living standard of the household.

Since announcing its ambitious pledge to eradicate child poverty, the Government's strategy has focused on providing extra income to families, particularly in terms of tax credits, and on increasing employment rates among parents. Recently, however, its strategy has developed to encompass a new emphasis on job retention, career progression and smoothing movement into and out of work, all of which should serve to safeguard and support children's movement out of poverty. With reference to poverty dynamics research, this article discusses why this new emphasis is crucial for reducing child poverty and highlights the possible future direction of developing policy in this light.

In 2000, the European Union established three principles that should guide Member State pension systems and their reforms: the financial sustainability of pension systems; adequacy of pensions; and the modernisation of systems. The latter included the achievement of greater gender equality and sought to respond to the significant gender gaps in public pension systems. This article demonstrates how the reforms carried out over the period 2000–2017 have focused on strengthening the financial sustainability of systems but may also have contributed to even greater gender inequality in old age protection. To this end, we examine the major legislative amendments concerning eligibility criteria and entitlement conditions in six countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Spain), as representative of the social insurance scheme.

This article examines the distribution of net benefits from subsidies to higher education in the United Kingdom, focusing on the system in place in the mid-1990s. We find the distribution to be regressive with respect to graduate income, with high lifetime earners receiving large net subsidies, while low lifetime earners are net contributors to the system. Our findings are of particular relevance to policymakers in the UK in light of the ongoing debate over tuition fees. However, these results should also be of interest to anyone who studies the socioeconomic implications of higher education.

The current UK Government's focus on the development of services to manage and support offenders with mental health problems has resulted in a number of innovative project developments. This research examines a service development in the North East of England which co-located mental health nurses with two Integrated Offender Management teams. While not solving all problems, the benefits of co-location were clear, although such innovations are now at risk from government changes which will make Integrated Offender Management the responsibility of new providers without compelling them to co-operate with health services.

The following article is dedicated to the empirical case study from Ukraine and focuses on the work of Ukrainian courts resolving the cases of internally displaced persons in the realm of social policy. Based on interviews and secondary sources in terms of data, it explains the problem area of the legal regulations and administrative practices applicable to internally displaced Ukrainians in the sphere of social rights, and it analyses selected decisions of the courts in the cases brought by them, including the courts’ approaches, motivations and limitations, all while doing so from the combined perspective of security, law and internal migrants’ agency.

Development of effective policy responding to recent increases in rough sleeping in England requires an understanding of the needs of people experiencing homelessness. Research on multiple exclusion homelessness (MEH) should be central to policy development as it highlights the interactions between ‘homelessness’ and ‘deep social exclusion’. This article focuses on the nexus between mental health and homelessness within MEH. Mixed methods findings from Nottingham, England, are used to investigate the role of mental ill-health in the pathways into MEH. This included a survey of the mental health needs of homeless people and ‘homeless pathway’ interviews. Survey results demonstrated high levels of diagnosed and self-reported mental health issues. Interviews highlighted that mental ill-health and homelessness were closely associated with adverse life experiences and could not be viewed in isolation from them. The article contributes further insight on the specificities of mental health issues, their temporal ordering, and interrelationship with homelessness experiences.

‘Risk’, ‘social inclusion’ and the ‘life course’ have become key notions in social policy after the Golden Age of welfare capitalism. This article reviews some of the key debates and developments in Australian social policy and research that underpin the contributions to this themed section. From ‘new social risks’ to ‘the great risk shift’ and the broader debates about the ‘risk society’ and ‘governmentality’, it reviews debates about social inclusion and the individualisation of risk, the risk shift in service delivery and the understanding and researching of the new life course. It concludes with suggestions for more community based research to inform social policy.

This article seeks to understand the challenges of combining the distinct aims of personalisation and integration in adult social care. Addressing the local context of service delivery in England through interviews with key stakeholders, we identify how personalisation and integration activities require different, and potentially conflicting, approaches. We observe direct tensions when structural integration with health systems distracts focus from achieving personalised delivery of care or where a focus on clinical outcomes takes precedence over broader wellbeing aspirations. Integration can entail the prioritisation of health over social care and a population rather than personal orientation. We suggest that personalisation and integration are in ‘policy conflict’ (Weible and Heikkila, 2017) and that policy-makers need to acknowledge and address this rather than promise the ‘best of both worlds’.

Applying a political economy lens, this article examines the impact of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), within a political context marked by crisis and austerity. Taking the case of Portugal, a country that faced a financial crisis and underwent an austerity plan, the article seeks to understand the impact of the CRPD at domestic level. What has changed, what has remained the same and what has deteriorated? And how has the disability movement responded and resisted to the crisis? This article addresses these questions and discusses the challenges of implementing disability rights in times of ‘enduring’ austerity.

In an article published in Prospect magazine, later reproduced in The Guardian, Goodhart (2004a) identifies a link between a decline in support for welfare and growing ethnic diversity. We argue that his analysis is flawed in terms of his comparative analysis, his definition of welfare, his ahistorical approach and his implicit conceptual framework of ethnic diversity. While he appears to conceal his political objectives behind the language of the third way, we maintain that it is time to wrest political language and activity away from those who claim to operate only on the basis of commonsense and a ‘what works’ philosophy.

This article is a contribution by a Jobcentre practitioner. The focus is first upon the context for government policies. The policies themselves are next outlined, and some problematic issues are then considered. The author's two case studies are based upon personal experience, and point up the importance of local initiatives within the national framework. Other key aspects include assessing and meeting individuals' needs, whether among the younger or older out-of-work; encouraging older persons to change expectations about themselves; and a measure of age diversity in training provision.

This article presents the results from a cumulative impact assessment of the distribution of tax and social security reforms in the UK since the 2010 general election. The analysis covers the 2010-15 and 2015-17 parliaments plus measures announced in the Autumn 2017 Budget. The article finds that taken as a whole, reforms since 2010 have had a regressive impact across the household income distribution, with average losses of around 10 per cent of net income in the bottom fifth of the distribution, compared to roughly a zero impact in the top three deciles. I also analyse results by a number of Equality Act protected characteristics including ethnicity, disability, gender, single/couple status and the number of children in the household. Lone parent families lose out more than any other demographic group while Pakistani and Bangladeshi adults lose out more than any other ethnic group. The reforms also have particular negative impacts on disabled people, on low income women and on households with children.

This paper focuses on the implications of adopting social audit approaches in order to implement equality policies in Scotland, exploring the tension between surface compliance and deep institutional engagement. Drawing on data from an evaluation of pubic sector bodies’ disability equality schemes, the paper provides examples of different levels of engagement, ranging from surface compliance (some education authorities) to institutional permeation of an equalities ethos (the Scottish Arts Council). The paper concludes by considering the future potential of single equality schemes to promote equality across Scottish society. It is argued that unless there is stronger support and challenge from Scottish government, there is a danger that equality schemes may become paper exercises rather than opportunities for institutional reflection and planning. At the same time, it would be a mistake to dismiss equality planning as merely an exercise in managerialism, since measuring the extent of inequality over time is an essential first step in the long process of achieving institutional change.

In this article we engage in a critical examination of how local authority Housing Solutions staff, newly placed centre stage in preventing homelessness amongst prison leavers in Wales, understand and go about their work. Drawing on Carlen’s concept of ‘imaginary penalities’ and Ugelvik’s notion of ‘legitimation work’ we suggest practice with this group can be ritualistic and underpinned by a focus on prison leavers’ responsibilities over their rights, and public protection over promoting resettlement. In response we advocate for less-punitive justice and housing policies, underpinned by the right to permanent housing for all prison leavers and wherein stable accommodation is understood as the starting point for resettlement. The analysis presented in this article provides insights to how homelessness policies could play out in jurisdictions where more joint working between housing and criminal justice agencies are being pursued and/or preventative approaches to managing homelessness are being considered.

The aim of this article is to look critically at the implications of gender equality concepts for individual freedom as conceptualised by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The scientific literature addressing the problem of freedom and gender equality with regard to public policy is considerably fragmented. Based on contextual literature, this article will offer four concepts of freedom that serve as analytical categories. I will analyse work/family reconciliation policy tools as introduced at the level of the European Union and reconnect them to three traditions of gender equality. The article reflects on historically embedded dichotomy between positive and negative freedom visible in gendered distinction between public and private. The main findings show that the relationship between freedom and equality is mediated by the selected policy tools suggesting that some policy tools expand freedom of all individuals while others indicate a possible limit for freedom.

Informal care provision is an integral part of the long-term care system. However, it has been shown to have negative effects on the carers’ economic activity, and understanding the mechanisms behind this is crucial for social policy design. This study provides new insight into mid-life carers’ decisions to reduce their economic activity through a convergent mixed-methods design. Quantitative analysis of a sample of 2,233 carers aged fifty from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) Wave 8 with follow up at age fifty-five, and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews of forty-eight carers between 2008-2010, were used. The combined results indicate that being female, single never married, having financial issues, being an employee, and frequently meeting a parent are associated with economic activity reduction; the carers’ own perspectives further elucidate key factors, such as their value and identity, family structure, life course events, and care intensity, which affect their decisions.

This article discusses the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). It suggests that the HRA is designed to promote a classic liberal conception of political citizenship, which protects the individual from the exercise of arbitrary state power, and not to extend the role of the state as a welfare provider. It goes on to argue that the government has limited the effectiveness of the HRA by claiming that they are building a culture of rights and responsibilities whilst treating human rights as an issue for the courts rather than an issue for government and public authorities generally. The article concludes by discussing extending the HRA to include economic, social and cultural rights.

This article considers the character of EU social policy and in particular the linkages between the EU's economic and social strategies. Arguably, the most recent enlargement of the EU represents a turning point for the future of EU social policy, though there is disagreement about its future if not so much about the causes of this crisis. The article concludes that the future political economy of EU social policy and indeed of the EU itself may be subject to fundamental changes.