The standard of living of children depends on (i) family income; (ii) production within the family; (iii) economies of scale within the family; and (iv) distributions within the family. We use 1976 and 1986 Family Expenditure Survey information on (i), models of housework time based on time-budget surveys to estimate (ii), and equivalence scales to take account of (iii).

This article examines the special role of the private rented sector in the provision of housing in London. The proportion of households who rent privately continues to be much higher in the capital than in the rest of the country. The reasons for this are analysed, together with the type of households that are found in the sector in London, and the sort of accommodation they obtain. The conclusion is reached that while the operation of the sector in London does differ in some important ways from the rest of the country, the major difference is simply its greater size in London. A forecast is then made of future trends. Finally, the likely effects of different policy options on those already in, and those seeking to enter the sector, are assessed.

Over recent years, a preventative approach has been promoted within adult social care policy and practice in England. However, progress has been somewhat inconsistent, in part due to issues around conceptualising what exactly prevention means within this context. Particularly since the financial crisis, there have emerged tensions between seeing prevention as a positive strategy to build assets and capability; as part of a neo-liberal project to roll back expectations for state support; or simply as a technocratic strategy to increase efficiency by deploying resources ‘upstream’ where they might have greater impact. This paper provides a critical perspective on how policy has unfolded over the last 15 years, which provides the context for an analysis of findings from a national survey of English local authorities and interviews with key stakeholders. These findings demonstrate a substantial commitment to preventative activity, but also some serious confusions and contradictions in how this agenda may be taken forward in the current policy environment.

A changing socio-economic environment and competition have led trade unions to extend their role and become service providers. This paper examines some of the issues of service delivery which arise. Four central implications are discussed: the trade union's need (1) to adapt to the competitive service provider's market, (2) to enlarge its consumer body, (3) to become an employer of workers, and (4) to expand its interests with business establishments and authorities over non-union matters. The paper focuses on the General Federation of Labour in Israel (the Histadrut), and its comprehensive health insurance scheme (Kupat Holim). The scheme is provided to all union members and their families as part of union membership. Nonetheless, alternative service systems seem sufficiently attractive for many union members to consider ‘deserting’ their union. The union depends on its members—consumers—to secure its broad base, universalistic image, source of income and legitimacy. Trying to attract consumers causes the union to bend some of its principles. Ultimately, service provision forces the union to adopt characteristics alien to, and even contradicting, its traditional, militant role as an organiser of labour.

Kevin Farnsworth deserves congratulations and thanks for expanding the analysis of the distribution of public resources. In scrutinising the limited data on public subsidies and other support to business, he opens up important issues highly relevant to the study of welfare, both nationally and comparatively. I want to take advantage of this opportunity to reflect on his paper and pose some questions that I hope he and others will pursue as this area is developed.

This article reappraises the distinction upon which Robert Pinker has insisted since the 1970s between the heuristic and the normative dimensions of concepts and theories associated with ‘welfare’ in social policy studies, a distinction prompted by, for instance, the writings of Richard Titmuss. It discusses Pinker's differentiation of forms of study which seek to account for the likenesses and unlikenesses within and between the welfare systems of different countries from forms of study aiming to establish moral criteria by which one system of welfare can be deemed superior to another. In particular, it highlights his emphasis on the need for social policy as a subject to attend to: (a) the reality of everyday ideas of social welfare and ‘faring well’ in general; (b) how everyday ideas of ‘faring well’ are exhibited in what he has called ‘conditional altruism’, whether exercised within families, towards strangers or across nations; (c) the practices undertaken by individuals and families to attain freedom and security as well as to meet those of their needs commonly taken within social policy studies to be the components of ‘welfare’; (d) the difficulties, moral, political, social and economic, associated with Titmussian welfare unitarism, in contrast to welfare pluralism. The article thus provides a review of aspects of Pinker's many published papers as well as his influential Social Theory and Social Policy and The Idea of Welfare.

The body of research on the take-up of social benefits is growing, but rarely focuses on universal cash benefits, especially in the field of long-term care. This paper is concerned with the long-term care (LTC) allowance in Austria, a universal cash benefit paid to those in need of LTC on seven different levels of dependency. It investigates whether take-up and distribution of the benefit reflect need in terms of age structure and health status of the population, and examines whether local variations in the distribution of benefits can be explained with socio-demographic variables. Combining administrative data on recipients and socio-demographic data on the municipal level with health information shows that higher levels of education and a higher share of foreigners are associated with a lower share of recipients, while a lower average household size increases the share of recipients. Overall, these variations are much stronger for lower levels of care needs than for higher ones. The results suggest variations in take-up that are determined either by non-application (in particular among lower levels of care needs) or discretion and potentially discrimination in the process of claiming the benefit.

The boundaries between state and charitable activities within the NHS are set out in regulations but are also enacted, blurred, and contested through local practices. This article reports research on NHS Charities– charitable funds set up within NHS organizations to enhance statutory provision – in Scotland. We analysed financial accounts and conducted qualitative interviews with staff in 12 of the 14 NHS Charities in Scotland, where they are generally known as endowments. Our findings suggest that Scotland’s endowments are relatively wealthy in charitable terms, but that this wealth is unevenly distributed when population size and socio-economic deprivation are considered. We also identify two diverging organisational approaches to decisions, including those about appropriate and inappropriate fundraising. We argue that these approaches cohere with contrasting ‘state’ and ‘charitable’ institutional logics, which in turn imply different attitudes to potential inequalities, and to relationships with local publics.

The article analyses opinions on deservingness expressed by social media users in debates about social welfare granted to refugees and families with dependent children in Poland. The article’s focus is on the content of deservingness criteria. This term describes the variety of factual and specific expectations applied to beneficiaries within each of the deservingness criteria. Qualitative content analysis of Facebook comments led to the finding that when users evaluate beneficiaries’ deservingness, they take into account their control over their own neediness, attitude, reciprocity in relation to the general population, identity and the level of need. However, within each of these deservingness criteria there is a plenitude of diverse, specific, often contradictory concepts of what exactly the sign of (un)deservingness is. The study shows that in the case of refugees, a group deemed less deserving, those content categories are more demanding and exclusive. In particular, the content of the need category proved broad and biased toward favouring a generally ‘more deserving’ group. The understanding of families’ need was often based on collective relative deprivation and the assumption that those who are needy have been neglected in previous social welfare programs, whereas refugees’ ‘real need’ was often a logically empty category.

This article examines UK newspaper coverage during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic March-August 2020. A qualitative framing analysis of public messaging on age in five high circulation newspapers provides a detailed account of who is deemed to be at risk of dying from COVID-19. Newspapers represent older people as most at risk, with disability as a secondary factor. Reports on who is responsible, who is at risk, and who is to blame for deaths from COVID-19 are framed as issues of public health and generational fairness, with individual responsibility occupying a prominent role. We also find two counter-frames. First, in letters to the editor, older people’s pleas for freedom are framed as a fight for their civil liberties. Second, newspapers praise 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore and frame his behaviour as a source of national pride. We identify this as positive ageism. We conclude that reporting across progressive and conservative newspapers reflects age-based stereotypes and paternalism towards older people. Public figures are represented as scapegoats or heroes, offering distraction from the less newsworthy fact that long-term under-investment in social care increased the risk of dying amongst the old and disabled during the pandemic.

People in vulnerable situations have the same right as others to participate in public spheres and influence health and welfare services. However, organisations that support these people and promote their interests are essential to their participation. This study investigated how people in vulnerable situations with lived experiences of using public services participate in organisations representing their interests. Fourteen representatives from eight interest organisations were interviewed. The first theme we developed – namely, participation as representatives of the organisations, revealed that a spokesperson’s role is connected to competence and that users of public services rarely obtain such a position. However, people with experience of using public services participate as living examples in external activities, increasing the groups’ visibility through their physical presence and their stories. The second theme was titled participation in organisational activities. The extent to which people with lived experiences participate in formal meetings varies, but they are often consulted by the organisations and attend events and informal gatherings. Notably, people in vulnerable situations interact with and, thus, influence the service-providing organisations. This article discusses the findings in light of representation theory and their implications for practice.

Employer family policy tends to be conceived as employers’ response to economic pressures, with the relevance of normative factors given comparatively little weight. This study questions this status quo, examining the normative relevance of public childcare and female leadership to employer childcare. Logistic regression analyses are performed on data from the 2016 National Study of Employers (NSE), a representative study of private sector employers in the United States. The findings show that public childcare is relevant for those forms of employer childcare more plausibly explained as the result of employers’ normative as opposed to economic considerations. The findings further suggest that female leaders are highly relevant for employer childcare, but that this significance differs depending on whether the form of employer childcare is more likely of economic versus normative importance to employers. The study provides an empirical contribution in that it is the first to use representative data of the United States to examine the relevance of state-level public childcare and female leadership. Its theoretical contribution is to show that normative explanations for employer childcare provision are likely underestimated in U.S. employer family policy research.