The cross-national works of development sociologists and of political scientists have sought to disentangle some of the determinants of welfare, whereas studies in comparative social policy have been mainly evaluative. These have laid themselves open to charges of being, variously, a-theoretical, unsystematic and narrowly focused on the state sector. However, a case is made here for the continuation of such studies with a clear focus on social policy rather than the mixed economy of welfare, using more explicit evaluative criteria and a range of methods. A small comparative study of social security benefit levels in Australia, Britain and the USA is used as an illustration of the potential in this approach and the problems of method involved.

This paper examines some of the social and political implications of retrenchment and privatisation in British housing policy. It reviews arguments and evidence about residualisation in the housing market, the effects of consumption sectoral cleavages, and attitudinal ambivalence to welfare, in an attempt to understand the apparent absence of discontent about inequalities in housing. It is argued that recent trends have exacerbated social fragmentation and reinforced tendencies to political acquiescence.

Early retirement is a policy for tackling unemployment which is popular among unions, employers and government, but there has been little recent research on its social implications for the individuals concerned. This article examines the reasons given by older men for retiring early and investigates the extent of income poverty in early retirement. Particular attention is paid to how early retirement is defined and to the differences between the early retired, the sick and the unemployed. Using data for men aged 60–64 from the General Household Survey for the years 1980–82 and from the Labour Force Survey of 1983, it is shown that ill-health is a less important reason for retirement than previous studies have suggested and that those who retire early are divided by class, with manual workers being more likely to retire early because of redundancy and more likely to be living on very low incomes than non-manual workers.

Past comparisons of the extent of poverty in Britain have been based on widely differing poverty levels. A constant relative poverty level is defined and new estimates of the extent of poverty from 1899 to 1983, based on this consistent standard, are presented. Factors that have contributed to the past changes are analysed.

Poverty can be defined and measured either directly (in terms of consumption) or indirectly (in terms of income). The relative deprivation concept of poverty is a direct concept; poverty is understood as visible poverty, that is, a low standard of consumption. The income poverty line is an indirect measure; poverty is established as low income. It is argued that recent mainstream poverty research combines a direct definition and an indirect measure. This causes there to be no logical line of deduction between definition and measurement and, along with other problems in the approach, renders the statistics produced invalid.

This response to Stein Ringen's paper recognises the importance of his recent work and the validity of some of the criticisms he makes of poverty studies, but argues that his own approach suffers from some of the same defects. He dismisses this research too hastily, partly because he has neglected some of the best of it. Drawing on these sources, this paper formulates with their help a more rigorous presentation of the relative concept of poverty and the analytical steps which should be taken by those using this concept.