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.

Intended to simplify the benefit system and ’make work pay’, Universal Credit (UC) is the UK’s first ‘digital by design’ benefit. Proponents of UC highlight the greater efficiency and effectiveness of digitalisation, while critics point to costly IT write-offs and the ‘digital divide’ between people with the skills and resources to access digital technologies, and those without. Less attention has been paid to automation in UC and its effects on the people subject to these rapidly developing technologies. Findings from research exploring couples’ experiences of claiming UC suggest that automated processes for assessing entitlement and calculating payment may be creating additional administrative burdens for some claimants. Rigid design parameters built into UC’s digital architecture may also restrict options for policy reform. The article calls for a broadening of thinking and research about digitalisation in welfare systems to include questions of administrative burden and the wider effects and impacts on claimants.

Integration is widely considered to be difficult to define and even harder to facilitate. Whist the integration of migrants to the United Kingdom (UK) remains a ‘hot topic’ in policy, politics and public opinion it is also the subject of numerous attempts to conceptualise and measure it. In this article we draw on empirical research undertaken with a wide range of organisations working between refugees and powerful national organisations which perform everyday ‘integration work’. We present a possible framework for operationalising and enriching the day-to-day work of the integration of refugees. We explore this work through the lens of the Equality Act 2010. In so doing, we aim to demonstrate that more closely aligning ‘integration work’ within the framework of the Equality Act provides both greater conceptual and operational clarity about how to enhance the integration of refugees in the UK.

In Finland, older persons are entitled to needs-tested public home care services. Home care mainly assists with personal care, activities of daily living and medical needs. It is complemented with auxiliary services that offer help with instrumental activities of daily living. In Finland, municipalities are responsible for organising public home care services. These services are mainly tax-funded, but user fees are also charged. In this article, we examine the levels of user fees of home care and auxiliary services in Finnish municipalities in 2018. The data analysis consists of descriptive statistics and exemplary cases of costs to the service users. The results show that user fees may represent a significant share of older persons’ monthly incomes. Consequently, home care users, especially those with low incomes, are at risk of economic deprivation and non-take-up of the services. We also found substantial variation in user fees across municipalities, causing regional inequality.

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.

This article examines the relationship between food insecurity and the uncertainty and inadequate financial resources associated with low quality work among lone mother households in the United States. Food insecurity has increased since the start of the Great Recession and is particularly high among lone mother households. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that mothers who have been employed part-time involuntarily and experienced job loss have an increased likelihood of experiencing food insecurity. This relationship holds even after controlling for multiple measures of household income, suggesting the relationship between low quality work and food insecurity is not solely determined by low financial resources. Results suggest that, to reduce food insecurity among lone mother families, policymakers must address both the low wages and uncertainty associated with low quality employment.

This cluster-randomised study analyses the implementation of a family intervention model (the HOLF model) on four target areas: parental employment, the financial and housing situations, and the social inclusion of children. The study compares family coordinators implementing the HOLF model including tools, schemes and supervision structures, with those implementing local family intervention practices. All twenty-nine participating Labour and Welfare offices received two family coordinators per office, with a caseload of twenty-one families. Of the offices, fifteen were randomised to implement the HOLF model, while fourteen implemented local family intervention practices. In a twelve-month follow-up of 862 parents, baseline and T2 questionnaires and administrative data show a significant improvement on financial situation and children’s social inclusion; however, with no differences between offices implementing the HOLF model and those implementing local family intervention practices. The results show the need for further analyses of key elements and implementation practices within family intervention projects.

Promoting access to suitable and affordable financial products and tackling financial exclusion has become a prominent feature of the political agenda in the UK, as the second annual ‘Financial Inclusion Report’ was published in November 2020 by the Department for Work and Pensions. This study provides an empirical analysis on financial exclusion and its association with ethnicity, using data from the UK’s Family Resources Survey. The analysis offers important new evidence on the significance of ethnicity, and it further identifies gender, family type and income as other key factors associated with access to financial products. The findings provide a valuable, new empirical dimension to our current understanding of financial exclusion and its links to ethnicity, inform the relevant political debate, and offer key evidence in support of policy initiatives targeted at enhancing financial security and well-being.

In England, the dominant policy narrative recognises no association between spending on children’s services and quality and a limited association between quality and deprivation. We combined 374 inspection outcomes between 2011 and 2019 with data on preventative and safeguarding expenditure and Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores. A multilevel logistic regression model predicting ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ judgements suggests each £100 increase in preventative spending per child was associated with a 69 per cent increase (95 per cent CI: 27.5 per cent, 124 per cent) in the odds of a positive inspection. A one-decile increase in deprivation was associated with a 16 per cent (95 per cent CI: −25 per cent, −5.7 per cent) decrease. Safeguarding expenditure was not associated with outcomes. Deprived communities have worse access to good-quality children’s services and government policies that have increased poverty and retrenched preventative services have likely exacerbated this inequality. Further, inattention to socioeconomic context in inspections raises concerns about their use in ‘take over’ policies.

Ireland’s policy approach to personal insolvency went through sudden changes in 2012 after a lengthy period of stability. This article presents the findings of a study examining one of the remedies introduced with the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 (as amended), the Debt Relief Notice (DRN). The study examined the DRN’s effectiveness in addressing the financial well-being of over-indebted individuals. The results revealed a reduction in participants’ financial distress after obtaining a DRN, which in turn enabled increased control over day-to-day finances. Improved health, increased resourcefulness, and lifestyle improvements were also identified when the participants’ financial distress was reduced. However, participants were incapable of attaining long-term financial resilience, and, therefore, were unable to achieve high financial well-being. A negative impact on social mobility was also identified as an outcome. The short-term impact identified is similar to findings of earlier research (Stamp, 2012) examining Ireland’s previous policy approach to personal insolvency.

Active labour market policy (ALMP) reforms have fundamentally changed welfare states over the last decades. Their objectives are quite diverse: workfare reforms have increased conditionality and sanctioning of benefits, while enabling reforms have extended education and training opportunities for the unemployed. Little is known about the political discourse on ALMP reforms. We investigate how the individual unemployed person is portrayed in ALMP reforms via a comparative coding analysis of parliamentary debates on labour market reforms that took place in Germany in 2003 (workfare) and in 2016 (enabling). Our results indicate that compared to enabling reforms the individual unemployed is less important in the framing of workfare reforms but more often blamed. Party characteristics matter: parties on the left more often point to the deservingness of the unemployed. However, when the social democratic party in government introduced a workfare reform they used blaming of unemployed persons as a framing strategy.

The relationship between social policy and inequality has often been contentious in Latin America. In this context, this article analysed the relationship between social spending and income inequality in the region in the short, medium, and long run. For this purpose, data on sixteen Latin American countries in the period 1990-2017 were gathered and analysed through a panel data study. The results showed that, in line with the findings at a global level, increased levels of overall social spending are indeed associated with reduced levels of income inequality in this region. However, each one of the four main areas of social spending were observed to have different effects on income inequality. Additionally, the results showed that, despite the reforms and the increases in budgets, the social protection and social services systems still have problems reaching those at the bottom of the income distribution in the region.

It is a global trend for nations to set forth various social policies to guide and regulate parents in their parenting practices as a form of family governance. In China, this trend is echoed by a number of ‘family education’ policies and guidelines. Drawing upon a critical discourse analysis of three family education documents, this article argues that the ideal Chinese parent is one with high suzhi who is responsible, rational and competent in science-based parenting knowledge and skills, conjoining closely with China’s nation-building agenda to produce high suzhi citizens who could contribute to the building of a strong nation. In reference to international scholarship, these discourses are understood as a form of family governance through parental responsibilisation and professionalisation. The article also calls for more empirical research to understand the implications of these official discourses for parenting and parent-child relations in diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts around China.

Data on the sex industry is notably hard to obtain. Existing evidence points towards an increase in the number of people selling sex, particularly through the online industry. The growing and increasingly diverse population poses challenges to service provision, as new groups are less visible and less likely to be in contact with specialist services. Simultaneously, there are increased calls for policies regulating the sex industry to be grounded in evidence. Relying on systematic literature and data reviews, this article provides a synthesis of the evidence on the prevalence of sex work and prostitution in England and Wales. It shows that no existing source allows producing reliable estimates of the size and characteristics of sex markets. As a result, policy is informed by partial pictures. The article proposes local mapping, an underused approach, to inform both policy development and service provision.

This research examined the sociodemographic factors associated with preventive care utilisation among Chinese older adults. Using the latest 2018 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), preventive care utilisation was defined as an annual physical examination. In the final study sample, approximately 69 per cent of the older adults had a physical examination annually. Older adults who had received a high level of formal education (eleven years or above) were more likely to use preventive care (all p < 0.01). Participants with a rural social health scheme and residing in rural areas were also more likely to use preventive care (all p < 0.05). For the interaction effect, rural older adults who could not afford healthcare expenses were less likely to use preventive care (AOR = 0.37, 95 per cent CI: 0.16, 0.84). More reforms should be directed toward reducing social disparities regarding preventive care utilisation.

Drawing on interviews with disability and income support beneficiaries, the article examines the encounters of Israeli citizens with the National Insurance Institute. Using the administrative burden conceptualisation, our analysis highlights three known types of costs: compliance, learning and psychological. The current study provides further conceptualisation of these burdens by unfolding the role of three concrete elements involved in generating these burdens: waiting, communication breakdowns, and administrative errors. These elements are discussed in terms of their contribution to a better understanding of bureaucratic procedures that constitute administrative burdens in the context of the benefit claiming process.

Studies on the development of social policies have provided us with a rich body of knowledge. However, being based mostly on class, gender or racial analysis, this body of work has seldom used disability as an analytical framework. This article proposes a systematic research agenda for addressing this lacuna. Drawing on the political and institutional approaches, this article illustrates how mainstream theories on social policy development cannot be assumed applicable to disability policies ‘as is’. To apply them effectively, we argue, students of social policy need to rework them in light of the insights of disability studies. Such conceptual work would involve closer attention to the uniqueness of disability as a socio-political category. Integrating these social policy theories with disability studies will allow us to better identify the unique political and institutional factors behind the trajectories of disability related policy. We conclude this discussion with suggestions for future research.

Risks of youth poverty in relation to employment have largely been overlooked both internationally and locally, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving beyond the concepts of income, economic factors and in-work poverty as applied to the general population, we examine the multi-scalar employment risk confronting highly educated working youth (aged eighteen to twenty-nine) in Hong Kong by assessing the intersection of precarious employment and in-work poverty, which is crucial to understanding youth poverty. Drawing on in-depth interview research on creative workers, this study calls for the reconceptualisation of in-work poverty through the lens of precarious employment, which is not viewed as a separate economic entity, but as an organic whole encompassing a multi-scalar risk in economic, social, psychological and political terrains generating an existential problem shaping young people’s sense of future and work-life meaning. This article sheds light on the policy implications of high-educated youth suffering from in-work poverty in the creative industry.