Natural selection

This chapter offers a critique of the operation of entitlement to the invalid care allowance, a benefit which provides a particularly interesting example of the continuing differential treatment of men and women within the British social security system. The actual economic costs of giving up work in order to provide care can be calculated in a variety of ways. The invalid care allowance is available to men and to certain categories of unmarried women who have given up full-time paid employment because they are caring at home for a severely disabled relative or friend. It is clear that within the operations of the invalid care allowance scheme, significant variations occur in the operation of the rules about sex, marital status and, until 1981, kinship. The prospect of the benefit’s being extended to married women raises again all the dilemmas of the wages-for-housework debate.

Archaeology · Geography · Natural (archaeology) · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Social Policy and Reform Studies