Hong Kong society has put family-friendly workplace policies under serious discussion, but the investigation of the views of employers remains insufficient. Adopting the structure-agency paradigm, this study used survey data to examine how structural constraints in business and the subjective world of individual employers influence their support to paid family leave. We found that industry categories were significantly associated with employers’ support but not the size of their enterprises. Employers’ personal stereotypes of family caregivers and their awareness of relevant laws did not exert significant independent effects on their policy support, but the significant interaction of the two suggested that employers with knowledge of regulations were less likely to formulate attitudes towards paid family leave based on their own stereotypes. Policy practices therefore need to consider the rationality of employers in the local contexts of Hong Kong, and aim to integrate legal education with de-stigmatisation of family caregivers in advocacy programs.

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become key anti-poverty reduction strategies in Latin America. There are different types of CCTs implemented at the national and subnational level in this region. This paper analyses the design of CCT programmes directed to assist female heads of households at the state level in Mexico. To do so, the study applies an analytical framework to make a comparative study of the key features of the design, looking specifically at the way the target population is constructed as welfare recipients and citizens. The results of this qualitative study suggest that, irrespective of the purposes of these social programmes, the design reflects certain values and normative beliefs related to the notion of market citizenship, which also seem to intersect with certain ideas about motherhood and the poor in Mexico.

This article draws on Ahmed's (2004) concept of affective economies as a means of critically exploring the nature and consequences of the ‘business case for mature aged workers’: a framework that underpins recent government and corporate policy focusing on extending working lives. Contra to the claims of the business case as wholly rationalistic ‘common sense’ and logical, the article argues that the business case operates discursively by drawing on latent but potent circuits of emotionality. Drawing on a range of government ‘best practice’ resources for employers, we show how the ‘rippling effects’ of emotionality result in particular systems of valuation pertaining to mature aged workers and later life working. In situating these dynamics as important to a broader affective political economy, we argue this may inadvertently undermine current initiatives seeking to promote the retention and recruitment of mature aged workers.

For much of the post-war period, the advanced industrial nations of Europe congratulated themselves on having it both ways: successful capitalist economies which also provided effective welfare states – affluence plus social justice. Commentators have traditionally seen social democracy as the friend of social welfare. More recently, the virtuous liaison of social democratic politics with successful democratic welfare capitalism has been called into question. Welfare states face pressures from economic globalisation, population ageing, spending constraint and changes in labour markets and in family patterns; it is argued that traditional social democratic approaches find it difficult to pursue policies that will enable welfare states to adapt and continue to combine high social standards with economic growth in the changed conditions of the twenty-first century. In short, the social democratic welfare state is outmoded.

This themed section arose partly as a response to the debate, which has been taking place within the academic social policy community recently, about the nature and future of social policy as an area of study. It includes contributions from those working within Politics departments, both in Britain and abroad, as well as from those working within more specific Social Policy contexts. There are many reasons why the Political Economy approach to social policy is particularly appropriate today. Three important reasons are the increasing importance of processes of ‘globalisation’, the ever more explicit linking of economic and social policies by governments, and the entry of new actors such as for-profit corporations into the domain of social policy.

Medicare is the most important publicly financed insurance programme in the US, with an annual budget at $500 billion or higher. It covers the majority of the inpatient, outpatient and prescription drugs expenditures of the seniors from age sixty-five until death. Using nationally representative data of current Medicare beneficiaries, this study estimated the dynamic relationship among gender, race, body weight, height, longevity, and lifetime Medicare expenditure. Next, we projected the trajectories of the total financial influence of demographic and biological changes in retirees on Medicare in the future. We found the increasing proportion of African Americans will lead to disproportionately lower lifetime Medicare expenditures per capita, due to racial disparities in longevity and access to outpatient care, but expect such disparities to decrease in the future. We also found the financial burden of obesity could be magnified by the increasing obesity rates among the white population.

This themed section in Social Policy and Society, exploring current trends within British social policy and welfare provision in the light of the re-emerging role of religion, is timely for three reasons.

North–South health research collaborations have a colonial history, and a contested presence in which organisations from resource-poor countries depend on collaborations with grant-holding institutions from affluent countries. Despite this sensitive context, there is a remarkable lack of guidance to support North–South health research collaborations in a comprehensive manner. A reference document of practical advice can establish standards from the beginning, thereby promoting equitable and open relationships. This article explains the process and some results of the development of such a document – a Guideline of Good Practice (GGP)– for the international health research collaboration Initiative for Maternal Mortality Programme Assessment (IMMPACT).

In this article, we seek to develop a framework of childcare vulnerabilities experienced by children, parents and providers engaged in the formal, unregulated childcare market. Informed by vulnerability theorists who examine care work within the context of dependency and power relations, we explore the extent to which notions of vulnerability have been considered in childcare research. Five types of vulnerability from the literature – physical, emotional, economic, legal and racial – are mapped onto the experiences of children, parents and providers. We conceptualise an understanding of vulnerability as it relates to unregulated childcare, showing how vulnerability in this sector is compound, interrelated and structural, creating specific challenges.

Poverty and inequality appear to be intractable features of rich industrialised nations. It is a great paradox that despite rising prosperity in most advanced industrialised countries over the last two or three decades, poverty and inequality have remained stubbornly high and have even increased in the majority of rich countries (OECD, 2008, 2011). The United Kingdom and Japan are no exceptions to these trends. Despite having markedly different historical trajectories, there is evidence that the two societies are converging on the issue of these pressing social problems.

The Scotland Act 2016 devolved powers over eleven social security benefits (including Carer’s Allowance) providing Scotland with some, albeit limited, opportunity to differentiate itself in terms of welfare policy progressivity. The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 set out the strategy for supporting those who limit their employment or educational enrolment due to the responsibility of caring for an adult or child with a health condition. Using a microsimulation of Scottish data from the Family Resource Survey, this article explores the potential impact, on income and poverty rates of carer households, of raising the level of CA by various amounts and by changing the eligibility criteria. It concludes that, while the Scottish Government’s ambitions are too modest to fully support their progressive rhetoric, or to change the overall income inequality landscape, the reforms in targeted policy do make a substantial difference to the lived experience to carers in poverty and, by extension, to the receipt of that care.

Evidence of ‘dissemination’ is now seen as part of research delivery by grant-giving bodies such as the ESRC and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Drawing on the growing body of research into media sources (Manning 2001, Davis, 2000) and relating it to debates on the public sphere (Habermas 1989), the paper will ask what (if anything) researchers have to gain from involvement with the mass media and whether specialised help can assist in bringing social policy research from the margins into the mainstream of media discourse. It will look in particular at the special difficulties of disseminating ‘fuzzy’ qualitative research findings which do not lend themselves to obviously eye-catching headlines. The paper will draw on an ESRC funded experiment at the University of Leeds as a case study with which to explore these issues.

The notion of building welfare around work poses fresh challenges from a life-course perspective, where the situation of older workers has largely been neglected by policymakers committed to the ‘social investment perspective’ – typically constructed as a policy paradigm for ‘human capital’ development in children and young adults (Esping-Andersen, 2002). This article seeks to re-focus attention on the policy challenges relating to the needs of older workers within the new ‘inclusive growth’ agendas that seek to advance equitable opportunities for all. Social investment policies pose a range of issues and challenges for ageing populations that are discussed and examined in detail in this article. If social investment policy is to succeed in ageing OECD societies, it will mean broadening the investment perspective to include the (neglected) education and training needs of older workers to ensure that everyone can contribute to and share in economic prosperity.

This paper reviews four texts that address connectedness in social relationships. It considers concepts of care and social capital and how these are applied in policy and practice. It argues the importance of understandings deriving from these concepts in developing policies that support well-being, reflect the significance of moral decision making and enable the development of supportive networks.

This article sheds light on a policy area where the notion of the active citizen has gained prominence as part of the transformation of the welfare state: purchasing private health services and private health insurance for children in Finland. Although the country’s universal health care system offers free primary health care for children, 40 per cent of children now have private insurance. Drawing on interviews with parents who seek private solutions, we examine what they perceive to be good health care. Our analysis reveals that parents are looking for certain practices – in Finland available only in the private sector – that they see as signs of good care. The unavailability of these practices in public health care calls into question the access, quality and efficiency of the public system. Based on these findings, we discuss the possible consequences of the disparity between parents’ expectations and the universal health care system.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, discussions of social justice in the social science literature focused largely on social class. The implicit assumption of much of the literature was that a more just society would be achieved through the reduction of inequalities in the distribution of economic and social resources. Since then, there has been a growing focus on plural aspects of social justice. Many writers now distinguish between distributive, cultural and associational aspects of social justice. However, the different implications of these facets of social justice for different groups, and potential tensions between them, have rarely been adequately recognised. Given New Labour's focus on social justice, and its belief that attaining greater social justice is compatible with achieving greater efficiency in the public sector, there is a need to examine more closely the understandings of social justice underpinning a range of policy initiatives.