Christopher Deeming
Biographic Data
| ID | 277532 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Deeming |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Deeming |
| SIGNATURE | DEEMING C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4825-1373 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 210 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Health systems in the Covid ‐19 crises: Comparative patterns of NHS satisfaction and preferences for public health action in Scotland and England
It is often claimed Scotland is more social democratic in outlook compared to England, if this is the case then we might expect to find differences in public attitudes towards health and social justice, reflecting the growing health policy divergence between the two nations. Comparative attitudes towards healthcare in Scotland and England are worthy of close scrutiny here, given the different reform trajectories, with the running of the Scottish …
Comparative mainstreaming? Mapping the uses of the comparative method in social policy, sociology and political science since the 1970s
This article maps the development and uses of the comparative method in academic research since the 1970s. It is based on an original database that we constructed for our review of 12,483 articles extracted from leading journals representing the disciplines of Social Policy, Political Science and Sociology. We proceed to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reported comparative research effort. We find that the comparative method became…
The Struggle for Social Sustainability: Moral Conflicts in Global Social Policy
Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets: International and Comparative Policy Perspectives
Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets: International and Comparative Policy Perspectives
Research into minimum income standards and reference budgets around the world is compared in this illuminating book. From countries with long established research traditions to places where it is relatively new, the book sets out the different aims and objectives of investigations into the minimum needs and requirements of populations, and the historical contexts, theoretical frameworks and methodological issues that lie behind each approach. For…
Coming together in a rightward direction: Post-1980s changing attitudes to the British welfare state
Major changes in the British welfare state were initiated during the 1980s in response to the 1970s' stagflation, rapid globalisation and the government's inability to ensure full employment: the relatively unrestricted payment of unemployment benefits was replaced by a jobseekers' allowance with applicants obliged to seek work actively and, if required, undergo training. Public support for this shift lagged behind the policy introductions, but f…
The Politics of (Fractured) Solidarity: A Cross‐National Analysis of the Class Bases of the Welfare State
This article considers the politics of social solidarity from a cross‐national perspective. In the analysis, we rely on four waves of international social survey data for our sample of Western nations, representative of different welfare state traditions. The time span is a 20‐year period and the total country‐wave sample comprises over 40,000 records. While there is popular support for governmental actions to protect citizens in old‐age and sick…
Reframing global social policy: Social investment for sustainable and inclusive growth
Christopher Deeming and Paul Smyth together with internationally renowned contributors propose that the merging of the ‘social investment’ and ‘inclusive growth and development’ agendas is forging an unprecedented global social policy framework. The book shows how these key ideas together with the environmental imperative of ‘sustainability’ are shaping a new global development agenda. This framework opens the way to a truly global social policy …
The Lost and the New ‘Liberal World’ of Welfare Capitalism: A Critical Assessment of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism a Quarter Century Later
Celebrating the 25th birthday of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's seminal book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), this article looks back at the old ‘liberal world’ and examines the new. In so doing, it contributes to debates and the literature on liberal welfare state development in three main ways. First, it considers the concept of ‘liberalism’ and liberal ideas about welfare provision contained within Three Worlds . Here we are also intere…
Reassessing the ‘Social Investment Perspective’ for ‘Inclusive Growth’: Where do Older Workers Fit
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 o…
Classed attitudes and social reform in cross-national perspective: A quantitative analysis using four waves from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)
This article attempts to forge new links between social attitudes and social policy change in Australia. Drawing on four survey waves of international social survey data and using multivariable regression analysis, this article sheds new light on the determinants of Australian attitudes towards the welfare state in a comparative perspective. It examines their variations across time and social groupings and then compares Australian welfare attitud…
The ‘Social Investment Perspective’ in Social Policy: A Longue Durée Perspective
The ‘social investment perspective’ (OECD, : 14) arguably represents the very latest justification for social policy to guide the development of the economy and society in the 21st century. As yet, its history remains largely unexplored. This article aims to place it in a wider framework by exploring theoretical considerations over a longer timescale, drawing on early observations of founding social theorists on social investment including R. H. …
British political values, attitudes to climate change, and travel behaviour
The UK is committed to a sharp reduction of greenhouse gases. Progress towards its goal will depend on whether the public can be persuaded to change their travel behaviour. Using British Social Attitudes 2011 survey data, analyses show that the majority of adults – especially the young and better-educated – believe that climate change is occurring but even concerned believers appear reluctant to modify their behaviour. Policies designed to alter …
Defining Minimum Income (and Living) Standards in Europe: Methodological Issues and Policy Debates
Minimum income protection is gaining new significance in European social policy. In an effort to promote social inclusion, the European Parliament has called on the European Commission and EU Member States to guarantee the minimum right to social safety nets. The Commission has been considering, in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, the possibility of setting minimum standards for social protection. It is timely then to survey the debates s…
Rethinking Social Policy and Society
Political and administrative processes are leading to collectively undesirable and intolerable societal outcomes in the advanced liberal democracies, as policymakers seek to address social issues in the design and implementation of new social policies that actively govern conduct. Behavioural regulation is the order of the day. For scholars interested in the development of social policy and the idea of a society as a whole, it is timely to begin …
Foundations of the Workfare State – Reflections on the Political Transformation of the Welfare State in B ritain
The B ritish ‘welfare state’ has been transformed. ‘Welfare’ has been replaced by a new ‘workfare’ regime (the ‘ W ork P rogramme’) defined by tougher state regulatory practices for those receiving out‐of‐work benefits. US ‐style mandatory community work programmes are being revived and expanded. This article, therefore, considers shifting public attitudes to work and welfare in B ritain and changing attitudes to working‐age welfare and out‐of‐wo…
Investigating the Macro Determinants of Self-Rated Health and Well-Being Using the European Social Survey: Methodological Innovations across Countries and Time
At present, there is a debate over the relative importance and contribution of household income to well-being, and the link between economic growth, welfare, and well-being is not fully understood. We sought to examine how changes in contextual and individual income (spanning the Great Recession) are associated with changes in self-reported well-being in the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–2011. A multivariate multilevel analysis was performed …
Class and Cuisine in Contemporary Britain: The Social Space, the Space of Food and Their Homology
Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions - a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic fo…
The mis-measurement of extreme global poverty: A case study in the Pacific Islands
Debate over the measurement of global poverty in low- and middle-income countries continues unabated. There is considerable controversy surrounding the 'dollar a day' measure used to monitor progress against the Millennium Development Goals. This article shines fresh light on the debate with new empirical analyses of poverty (including child poverty), inequality and deprivation levels in the Pacific island state of Vanuatu. The study focuses not …
Social Investment after Neoliberalism: Policy Paradigms and Political Platforms
The concept of the 'social investment state' refocuses attention on the productive function of social policy eclipsed for some time by the emphasis on its social protection or compensation roles. Here we distinguish between different social investment strategies, the Nordic 'heavy' and the Liberal 'light', with particular reference to the inclusive growth approach adopted in Australia. In 2007, social democrats in Australia returned to government…
The choice of the necessary: Class, tastes and lifestyles
Purpose – Our attitudes, values and tastes are shaped by our position in social space. At least, that was the argument Pierre Bourdieu set out in his seminal work, La Distinction . The purpose of this paper is to consider Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction and his argument that working-class families exhibit cultural attitudes and tastes for social necessity. Design/methodology/approach – Attitudinal data relating to social necessity are …
Social democracy and social policy in neoliberal times
This article considers the path of social policy and democracy in Australia and the latest set of welfare reforms under Labor. The reforms can be seen to mark a reaction to the excesses of neoliberal government on the one hand, but they also represent continuity in neoliberal thought and policy on the other. As we shall see, engrained ideas about individualist wage-earning welfare, that were established during the formative years of the 20th cent…
The Working Class and Welfare: F rancis G . C astles on the Political Development of the Welfare State in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand Thirty Years On
In his celebrated work of comparative policy, Francis Castles argued that a radical wage‐earning model of welfare had evolved in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand over the course of the 20th century. The C astles' thesis is shown to have two parts: first, the ‘fourth world of welfare’ argument that rests upon protection of workers; and, second, an emphasis on the path‐dependent nature of social policy. It is perfectly possible to accept the second pre…
Trials and Tribulations: The ‘Use’ (and ‘Misuse’) of Evidence in Public Policy
Randomized controlled trials ( RCTs ) are increasingly playing a central role in shaping policy for development. By comparison, social experimentation has not driven the great transformation of welfare within the developed world. This introduces a range of issues for those interested in the nature of research evidence for making policy. In this article we will seek a greater understanding of why the RCT is increasingly seen as the ‘gold standard’…
Addressing the Social Determinants of Subjective Wellbeing: The Latest Challenge for Social Policy
The idea that the happiness and wellbeing of individuals should shape government policy has been around since the enlightenment; today such thinking has growing practical policy relevance as governments around the world survey their populations in an effort to design social policies that promote wellbeing. In this article, we consider the social determinants of subjective wellbeing in the UK and draw lessons for social policy. Survey data are tak…
Social Investment after Neoliberalism: Policy Paradigms and Political Platforms
The concept of the 'social investment state' refocuses attention on the productive function of social policy eclipsed for some time by the emphasis on its social protection or compensation roles. Here we distinguish between different social investment strategies, the Nordic 'heavy' and the Liberal 'light', with particular reference to the inclusive growth approach adopted in Australia. In 2007, social democrats in Australia returned to government…
Class and Cuisine in Contemporary Britain: The Social Space, the Space of Food and Their Homology
Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions - a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic fo…
Foundations of the Workfare State – Reflections on the Political Transformation of the Welfare State in B ritain
The B ritish ‘welfare state’ has been transformed. ‘Welfare’ has been replaced by a new ‘workfare’ regime (the ‘ W ork P rogramme’) defined by tougher state regulatory practices for those receiving out‐of‐work benefits. US ‐style mandatory community work programmes are being revived and expanded. This article, therefore, considers shifting public attitudes to work and welfare in B ritain and changing attitudes to working‐age welfare and out‐of‐wo…
Rethinking Social Policy and Society
Political and administrative processes are leading to collectively undesirable and intolerable societal outcomes in the advanced liberal democracies, as policymakers seek to address social issues in the design and implementation of new social policies that actively govern conduct. Behavioural regulation is the order of the day. For scholars interested in the development of social policy and the idea of a society as a whole, it is timely to begin …
The Impact of the Crisis on Australian Social Security Policy in Historical Perspective
The Labor government was elected in November 2007 with a commitment to reject the labour market deregulation and other neo‐liberal policies of its predecessor, promote equality of opportunity and tackle entrenched social and economic disadvantage by implementing a new social inclusion agenda. In response to the financial crisis which had begun at the end of 2007 and had turned into a full global recession by the middle of 2008, the government int…
Addressing the Social Determinants of Subjective Wellbeing: The Latest Challenge for Social Policy
The idea that the happiness and wellbeing of individuals should shape government policy has been around since the enlightenment; today such thinking has growing practical policy relevance as governments around the world survey their populations in an effort to design social policies that promote wellbeing. In this article, we consider the social determinants of subjective wellbeing in the UK and draw lessons for social policy. Survey data are tak…
Active ageing' in practice: A case study in East London, UK
Interest in 'active ageing' policy as a means to promote well-being in later life has grown internationally. Britain's Labour government has advocated public, private and third sector partnerships to develop positive opportunities for community participation. This article considers the emerging local response, with interviews and focus groups carried out with active older people and service providers in a deprived, diverse community in East Londo…
Defining Minimum Income (and Living) Standards in Europe: Methodological Issues and Policy Debates
Minimum income protection is gaining new significance in European social policy. In an effort to promote social inclusion, the European Parliament has called on the European Commission and EU Member States to guarantee the minimum right to social safety nets. The Commission has been considering, in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, the possibility of setting minimum standards for social protection. It is timely then to survey the debates s…
The Lost and the New ‘Liberal World’ of Welfare Capitalism: A Critical Assessment of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism a Quarter Century Later
Celebrating the 25th birthday of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's seminal book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), this article looks back at the old ‘liberal world’ and examines the new. In so doing, it contributes to debates and the literature on liberal welfare state development in three main ways. First, it considers the concept of ‘liberalism’ and liberal ideas about welfare provision contained within Three Worlds . Here we are also intere…
Social democracy and social policy in neoliberal times
This article considers the path of social policy and democracy in Australia and the latest set of welfare reforms under Labor. The reforms can be seen to mark a reaction to the excesses of neoliberal government on the one hand, but they also represent continuity in neoliberal thought and policy on the other. As we shall see, engrained ideas about individualist wage-earning welfare, that were established during the formative years of the 20th cent…
British political values, attitudes to climate change, and travel behaviour
The UK is committed to a sharp reduction of greenhouse gases. Progress towards its goal will depend on whether the public can be persuaded to change their travel behaviour. Using British Social Attitudes 2011 survey data, analyses show that the majority of adults – especially the young and better-educated – believe that climate change is occurring but even concerned believers appear reluctant to modify their behaviour. Policies designed to alter …
Investigating the Macro Determinants of Self-Rated Health and Well-Being Using the European Social Survey: Methodological Innovations across Countries and Time
At present, there is a debate over the relative importance and contribution of household income to well-being, and the link between economic growth, welfare, and well-being is not fully understood. We sought to examine how changes in contextual and individual income (spanning the Great Recession) are associated with changes in self-reported well-being in the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–2011. A multivariate multilevel analysis was performed …
The ‘Social Investment Perspective’ in Social Policy: A Longue Durée Perspective
The ‘social investment perspective’ (OECD, : 14) arguably represents the very latest justification for social policy to guide the development of the economy and society in the 21st century. As yet, its history remains largely unexplored. This article aims to place it in a wider framework by exploring theoretical considerations over a longer timescale, drawing on early observations of founding social theorists on social investment including R. H. …
Trials and Tribulations: The ‘Use’ (and ‘Misuse’) of Evidence in Public Policy
Randomized controlled trials ( RCTs ) are increasingly playing a central role in shaping policy for development. By comparison, social experimentation has not driven the great transformation of welfare within the developed world. This introduces a range of issues for those interested in the nature of research evidence for making policy. In this article we will seek a greater understanding of why the RCT is increasingly seen as the ‘gold standard’…
Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and Wellbeing: A Multilevel Analysis
Social scientists in the comparative policy tradition have long argued that welfare systems in modern capitalist societies can be broken down into ideal types. The idea of different worlds of welfare capitalism has an enduring appeal and growing practical policy relevance as governments seek to enhance population wellbeing. In this paper, we explore the worlds of welfare theory from the perspective of happiness. Drawing on data from theWorld Valu…
Determining minimum standards of living and household budgets: Methodological issues
In Australia, sociological research into household budgets and standards of living has long provided a firm basis for policy-makers interested in creating a more inclusive society. The budget approach is, in essence, a simple and intuitive methodology for defining minimum income standards; these include 'poverty' thresholds. The budget methodology provides an explicit framework for selecting personal requirements deemed necessary to maintain a pa…
The Politics of (Fractured) Solidarity: A Cross‐National Analysis of the Class Bases of the Welfare State
This article considers the politics of social solidarity from a cross‐national perspective. In the analysis, we rely on four waves of international social survey data for our sample of Western nations, representative of different welfare state traditions. The time span is a 20‐year period and the total country‐wave sample comprises over 40,000 records. While there is popular support for governmental actions to protect citizens in old‐age and sick…
Minimum Income Standards: How Might Budget Standards be set for the UK
Britain's New Labour government will spend some 133 billion this year on social protection for vulnerable groups with low incomes such as pensioners, disabled people, and working families with and without children. It also regularly reviews the National Minimum Wage for workers. Although its intentions are laudable, the government can be criticised for setting income floors with little or no grounded assessment of individual welfare requirements.…
Minimum Incomes for Healthy Living (Mihl): Next thrust in UK social policy
English Research worldwide is establishing basic needs for personal health and well-being. Official acceptance of this consensual evidence into policy tends to be slow, partial and unsystematic, resulting in avoidable health deficits, waste of human potential and costs to society. Minimum personal costs of meeting these basic needs can be assessed, together with costs of the popular consensus on other requirements for healthy decent participatory…
The Working Class and Welfare: F rancis G . C astles on the Political Development of the Welfare State in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand Thirty Years On
In his celebrated work of comparative policy, Francis Castles argued that a radical wage‐earning model of welfare had evolved in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand over the course of the 20th century. The C astles' thesis is shown to have two parts: first, the ‘fourth world of welfare’ argument that rests upon protection of workers; and, second, an emphasis on the path‐dependent nature of social policy. It is perfectly possible to accept the second pre…
A fair deal for care in older age? Public attitudes towards the funding of long-term care
English The government has made nursing care in England and Wales free, while continuing to means-test personal care. This policy contrasts with the recommendation for free personal care made by the Royal Commission on Long-term Care in 1999. This article reports on a survey of attitudes towards financing care in old age from a representative sample of men and women in England aged 25 years and over. The majority of people feel that the state sho…
Paying for Old Age: Can People on Lower Incomes Afford Domiciliary Care Costs
The Labour government has made it clear that it will not countenance major changes in the financing of long–term care for older people in England and Wales. One consequence is that people on modest retirement incomes will continue to have to pay for elements of their care in their own homes. The government also implicitly assumes that people of working age, on average and below–average earnings, are expected to save in order to pay for long–term …
Comparative mainstreaming? Mapping the uses of the comparative method in social policy, sociology and political science since the 1970s
This article maps the development and uses of the comparative method in academic research since the 1970s. It is based on an original database that we constructed for our review of 12,483 articles extracted from leading journals representing the disciplines of Social Policy, Political Science and Sociology. We proceed to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reported comparative research effort. We find that the comparative method became…
Reassessing the ‘Social Investment Perspective’ for ‘Inclusive Growth’: Where do Older Workers Fit
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 o…
The Historical Development of Family Budget Standards in Britain, from the 17th Century to the Present
This article reviews the British tradition of research into household budget standards and describes a rich history of theoretical and methodological innovation in the social sciences. The origins of this enterprise lie in hypothetical family budget calculations made by political arithmeticians investigating living standards in the 1600s. Systematic budget inquiries emerge in England in the 1790s and by the end of the 19th century, normative stan…
Paying for Old Age: Can People on Lower Incomes Afford Domiciliary Care Costs
The Labour government has made it clear that it will not countenance major changes in the financing of long–term care for older people in England and Wales. One consequence is that people on modest retirement incomes will continue to have to pay for elements of their care in their own homes. The government also implicitly assumes that people of working age, on average and below–average earnings, are expected to save in order to pay for long–term …
A fair deal for care in older age? Public attitudes towards the funding of long-term care
English The government has made nursing care in England and Wales free, while continuing to means-test personal care. This policy contrasts with the recommendation for free personal care made by the Royal Commission on Long-term Care in 1999. This article reports on a survey of attitudes towards financing care in old age from a representative sample of men and women in England aged 25 years and over. The majority of people feel that the state sho…
Policy Targets and Ethical Tensions: UK Nurse Recruitment
In July 2000 Britain's New Labour government set a target of 20,000 extra nurses for the NHS by 2004. In February 2002, two years ahead of schedule, the target was achieved. The government is to be congratulated on meeting its target but ethical questions over recruitment practices remain. Nurse registrations to the UK from the (then) fifteen EU countries remain flat despite government guidance making this the first priority for international rec…
Decentring the NHS: A Case Study of Resource Allocation Decisions within a Health District
The aim of New Labour's health policy is to shift more of the balance of power and responsibility for services to the local level. But, while the government proclaims a new decentralized NHS, doubts exist about the extent to which the reality on the ground matches the tone of policy. This article reports empirical work examining the level of autonomy purchasers have over budgetary allocation. A case study analysis of purchasing within a single di…
Minimum Incomes for Healthy Living (Mihl): Next thrust in UK social policy
English Research worldwide is establishing basic needs for personal health and well-being. Official acceptance of this consensual evidence into policy tends to be slow, partial and unsystematic, resulting in avoidable health deficits, waste of human potential and costs to society. Minimum personal costs of meeting these basic needs can be assessed, together with costs of the popular consensus on other requirements for healthy decent participatory…
Minimum Income Standards: How Might Budget Standards be set for the UK
Britain's New Labour government will spend some 133 billion this year on social protection for vulnerable groups with low incomes such as pensioners, disabled people, and working families with and without children. It also regularly reviews the National Minimum Wage for workers. Although its intentions are laudable, the government can be criticised for setting income floors with little or no grounded assessment of individual welfare requirements.…
New Labour, equity and public services: A Rawlsian perspective
The UK government has repeatedly stressed its commitment to equity in public services. It is difficult to test this commitment in many policy arenas, but it can be achieved more readily in services where a balance has to be struck between state and individual financing and provision. This article uses the example of long-term care for older people to illustrate the arguments. A modified form of Rawls' Difference Principle is employed to character…
Determining Semi‐Normative Poverty Lines Using Social Survey Data
Debates about how to set minimum income standards for health and general well‐being are very current in Britain. Family budget standards remain popular but the results can be criticized for being little more than abstractions. They are to an extent ‘artificial’ and this raises questions about their ‘real adequacy’. Another way to operationalize adequacy of income, in a lived sense, is to consider the household income levels at which a specified, …
Active ageing' in practice: A case study in East London, UK
Interest in 'active ageing' policy as a means to promote well-being in later life has grown internationally. Britain's Labour government has advocated public, private and third sector partnerships to develop positive opportunities for community participation. This article considers the emerging local response, with interviews and focus groups carried out with active older people and service providers in a deprived, diverse community in East Londo…
The Historical Development of Family Budget Standards in Britain, from the 17th Century to the Present
This article reviews the British tradition of research into household budget standards and describes a rich history of theoretical and methodological innovation in the social sciences. The origins of this enterprise lie in hypothetical family budget calculations made by political arithmeticians investigating living standards in the 1600s. Systematic budget inquiries emerge in England in the 1790s and by the end of the 19th century, normative stan…
The Impact of the Crisis on Australian Social Security Policy in Historical Perspective
The Labor government was elected in November 2007 with a commitment to reject the labour market deregulation and other neo‐liberal policies of its predecessor, promote equality of opportunity and tackle entrenched social and economic disadvantage by implementing a new social inclusion agenda. In response to the financial crisis which had begun at the end of 2007 and had turned into a full global recession by the middle of 2008, the government int…
Unfinished business: Peter Townsend's project for minimum income standards
Purpose Peter Townsend is one of the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century and best known for his pioneering research into poverty. This paper aims to revisit Townsend's early work discussing the measurement of poverty and attempts to operationalise his ideas for determining minimum income standards for healthy living. Design/methodology/approach The article is based upon a secondary analysis of data taken from the UK Expenditure an…
Determining minimum standards of living and household budgets: Methodological issues
In Australia, sociological research into household budgets and standards of living has long provided a firm basis for policy-makers interested in creating a more inclusive society. The budget approach is, in essence, a simple and intuitive methodology for defining minimum income standards; these include 'poverty' thresholds. The budget methodology provides an explicit framework for selecting personal requirements deemed necessary to maintain a pa…
Food and Nutrition Security at Risk in Later Life: Evidence From the United Kingdom Expenditure & Food Survey
Securing adequate food and nutrition is essential for the maintenance of our health and function in society. This article examines the household characteristics associated with food and nutrition security in the United Kingdom population aged 60 years and over. Data are taken from the Expenditure and Food Survey, a continuous cross-sectional survey of household expenditure, food consumption and income. Survey data for 2002-05 provided a total sam…
Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and Wellbeing: A Multilevel Analysis
Social scientists in the comparative policy tradition have long argued that welfare systems in modern capitalist societies can be broken down into ideal types. The idea of different worlds of welfare capitalism has an enduring appeal and growing practical policy relevance as governments seek to enhance population wellbeing. In this paper, we explore the worlds of welfare theory from the perspective of happiness. Drawing on data from theWorld Valu…
The Working Class and Welfare: F rancis G . C astles on the Political Development of the Welfare State in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand Thirty Years On
In his celebrated work of comparative policy, Francis Castles argued that a radical wage‐earning model of welfare had evolved in A ustralia and N ew Z ealand over the course of the 20th century. The C astles' thesis is shown to have two parts: first, the ‘fourth world of welfare’ argument that rests upon protection of workers; and, second, an emphasis on the path‐dependent nature of social policy. It is perfectly possible to accept the second pre…
Trials and Tribulations: The ‘Use’ (and ‘Misuse’) of Evidence in Public Policy
Randomized controlled trials ( RCTs ) are increasingly playing a central role in shaping policy for development. By comparison, social experimentation has not driven the great transformation of welfare within the developed world. This introduces a range of issues for those interested in the nature of research evidence for making policy. In this article we will seek a greater understanding of why the RCT is increasingly seen as the ‘gold standard’…
Addressing the Social Determinants of Subjective Wellbeing: The Latest Challenge for Social Policy
The idea that the happiness and wellbeing of individuals should shape government policy has been around since the enlightenment; today such thinking has growing practical policy relevance as governments around the world survey their populations in an effort to design social policies that promote wellbeing. In this article, we consider the social determinants of subjective wellbeing in the UK and draw lessons for social policy. Survey data are tak…
The choice of the necessary: Class, tastes and lifestyles
Purpose – Our attitudes, values and tastes are shaped by our position in social space. At least, that was the argument Pierre Bourdieu set out in his seminal work, La Distinction . The purpose of this paper is to consider Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction and his argument that working-class families exhibit cultural attitudes and tastes for social necessity. Design/methodology/approach – Attitudinal data relating to social necessity are …
Social democracy and social policy in neoliberal times
This article considers the path of social policy and democracy in Australia and the latest set of welfare reforms under Labor. The reforms can be seen to mark a reaction to the excesses of neoliberal government on the one hand, but they also represent continuity in neoliberal thought and policy on the other. As we shall see, engrained ideas about individualist wage-earning welfare, that were established during the formative years of the 20th cent…
Defining Minimum Income (and Living) Standards in Europe: Methodological Issues and Policy Debates
Minimum income protection is gaining new significance in European social policy. In an effort to promote social inclusion, the European Parliament has called on the European Commission and EU Member States to guarantee the minimum right to social safety nets. The Commission has been considering, in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, the possibility of setting minimum standards for social protection. It is timely then to survey the debates s…
Rethinking Social Policy and Society
Political and administrative processes are leading to collectively undesirable and intolerable societal outcomes in the advanced liberal democracies, as policymakers seek to address social issues in the design and implementation of new social policies that actively govern conduct. Behavioural regulation is the order of the day. For scholars interested in the development of social policy and the idea of a society as a whole, it is timely to begin …
Foundations of the Workfare State – Reflections on the Political Transformation of the Welfare State in B ritain
The B ritish ‘welfare state’ has been transformed. ‘Welfare’ has been replaced by a new ‘workfare’ regime (the ‘ W ork P rogramme’) defined by tougher state regulatory practices for those receiving out‐of‐work benefits. US ‐style mandatory community work programmes are being revived and expanded. This article, therefore, considers shifting public attitudes to work and welfare in B ritain and changing attitudes to working‐age welfare and out‐of‐wo…
Investigating the Macro Determinants of Self-Rated Health and Well-Being Using the European Social Survey: Methodological Innovations across Countries and Time
At present, there is a debate over the relative importance and contribution of household income to well-being, and the link between economic growth, welfare, and well-being is not fully understood. We sought to examine how changes in contextual and individual income (spanning the Great Recession) are associated with changes in self-reported well-being in the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–2011. A multivariate multilevel analysis was performed …
Class and Cuisine in Contemporary Britain: The Social Space, the Space of Food and Their Homology
Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions - a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic fo…
Political science (33 works) · Economics (32 works) · Law (23 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (23 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economic growth (18 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Public economics (14 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (12 works)