The COVID-19 pandemic has affected working women’s well-being in different ways due to contrasting national responses. This article focuses on the specific context of Singapore, which implemented differentiated rules for workers: essential workers continued to report to workplaces, while non-essential workers were required to work from home. This policy had far-reaching implications for working women, who are more likely than husbands to juggle paid work and household duties. The article uses longitudinal data collected in 2018 and during the pandemic in 2020, specifically during Singapore’s lockdown period, to measure changes in 287 working women’s self-reported levels of stress, fatigue, and quality of interpersonal relationships by essential worker status. While all workers were affected by the pandemic, female essential workers were more likely than their non-essential peers to report declines in stress levels from 2018 to 2020, and less likely to report changes in spousal relationships, both positive and negative. Findings suggest that the differences were driven by exposure to quarantine conditions faced by non-essential workers. Our results highlight the importance of policies supporting frontline workers and more gender-equitable labour market policies to support married women juggling the twin demands of employment and household responsibilities.

The rapid widening of wealth inequalities has led to sharp differences in living standards in Great Britain. Understanding whether and separately the rate at which individuals accumulate particular types of wealth by family background is important for improving wealth and social mobility. We show offspring wealth inequality is driven by housing wealth, and holding such wealth is becoming increasingly associated with early life circumstances relating to parental housing tenure and education, even after controlling for adult offspring’s own characteristics. Importantly, we find adult offspring whose parents hold a degree and are homeowners are no less likely to report homeownership and housing wealth compared to older cohorts from the same background. Our findings infer the intergenerational rank correlation in housing wealth is set to double in approximately three decades.

Analysis of the 2010/11 Longitudinal Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey shows that overly-simplistic conceptions of graduate success underestimate the value of obtaining a degree in some subjects. Using a skills-based classification of graduate jobs the research finds that maths and vocationally-oriented subjects associated with higher earnings returns (Belfield et al., 2018a, 2018b) – engineering, architecture, computer science and nursing – increase the chances of having an ‘Expert’ job compared to the average for all graduates. However, more generalist subjects that have been linked with lower earnings such as creative arts, languages and mass communication and documentation are better for accessing graduate jobs where creativity and ability to communicate is key. The research demonstrates the value of using a more nuanced conception of graduate jobs and shows that debate about the value of higher education needs to move away from a narrow focus on earnings.

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.

Studies on climate change mitigation and environmental degradation suggest that lifestyle changes in high-income countries can help promote environmental sustainability. Such changes may include material sacrifices on the part of the individual. Yet, accepting material sacrifices can be a challenging task for both individuals and countries. Can publicly provided economic protection facilitate the acceptance of such sacrifices? This study examines whether social insurance generosity is likely to make people more willing to accept material sacrifices for the sake of environmental protection. Using multilevel regression modelling to analyse data on social insurance programmes and attitudes towards material sacrifices in nineteen high-income countries, the results of the study suggest that social insurance generosity has a positive effect on attitudes towards accepting material sacrifices, with some variation across programmes and social groups.

In 2018, Nigeria began the implementation of a cash transfer programme (CCT) for poor and vulnerable people. We evaluated the impact of cash transfer on household livelihood outcomes in Nigeria. Using multistage cluster sampling methodology, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries within the same locality were randomly selected to participate in a survey to assess the impact of cash transfer on food security and food diversity.

When gender, marital status, educational status, and age were controlled, beneficiaries were about three times more likely than non-beneficiaries to report experiencing little or no hunger. Children 0–59 months of beneficiaries were twice likely to have at least three meals a day compared to children of non-beneficiaries. Difference in differences regression analysis showed that on the average, beneficiaries of the cash transfer significantly consumed more diverse food than non-beneficiaries. Beneficiaries of the CCT experienced fewer episodes of severe hunger, have more meal frequency, and higher household dietary diversity than non-beneficiaries. This shows that the CCT programme is effective and can directly mitigate adverse effects of malnutrition with its long-term negative impact on children and thus must be expanded to more vulnerable people across all states in Nigeria.

Home ownership is the largest component of wealth for most households and its intergenerational transmission underpins the production and reproduction of economic inequalities across generations. Yet, little is currently known about ethnic differences in the intergenerational transmission of housing tenure. In this paper, we use linked Census data covering 1971–2011 to document rates of intergenerational housing tenure mobility across ethnic groups in England and Wales. We find that while home ownership declined across all ethnic groups during this period, there were substantial differences between them. Black, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi households experienced the strongest intergenerational link between parent and child housing tenure, and Black individuals had the highest rates of downward housing mobility. In contrast, those of Indian origin had homeownership rates similar to White British families, and a weaker link between parent and child housing tenure. These patterns are likely to exacerbate existing gradients in other dimensions of ethnicity-based inequality, now and in the future.

Across the globe, welfare conditionality and sanctioning increasingly permeate social welfare programs. Paternalism is one of the key normative rationales invoked when both scholars and politicians debate the legitimacy of this reform. With a view to bringing the scholarly and political debates into closer conversation with each other, this paper examines how paternalism manifests in political debate. We systematically analyse the paternalist arguments made by Australian federal parliamentarians in favour of the virtually identical 2017 and 2018 policy proposals to drug test welfare recipients, both of which resulted in a stalemate. We find that paternalistic arguments primarily employed soft, weak, and welfare paternalism, with heavy emphasis on the purported benefits of the intervention, limited emphasis on the issue of personal liberty, and noticeable silence about autonomy and consent. These findings shed light on the scholarly features of paternalism that are obscured in contemporary political discourse. This analysis can direct political philosophers to features of paternalism that need more attention as well as suggest ways that drug and welfare policy advocates may engage more effectively with paternalist arguments.

‘Value pluralism’ is a strand of analytical philosophy that posits the plurality of morally significant values. By enabling systematic mapping of the diversity of moral registers within which social policy concerns might legitimately be considered, we contend that value pluralist-inspired analysis can aid constructive policy dialogue. Our argument is founded on four claims: first, as a matter of normative principle, value pluralism represents a defensible ethical standpoint; second, as a matter of fact, people are attracted to a plurality of moral values; third, as a matter of democratic legitimacy, pluralism offers a means of (partially) reconciling rival moral claims; fourth, as a matter of political strategy, pluralism offers a pragmatic approach that can engage protagonists on their own terms. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply this pluralist approach to the vexed question of welfare conditionality, which we interrogate via six normative perspectives (rights, utilitarianism, contractualism, communitarianism, paternalism and social justice).

Employer engagement with active labour market programmes (ALMPs) and related employability projects is seen as vital to their ‘success’. However, the role of employers remains under-researched – a gap which widens in relation to non-governmental programmes led by not-for-profit, third-sector organisations (TSOs). Recent studies suggest that engaging employers may depend on addressing both human resource (HR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) ‘logics’ and linking the roles of ‘gatekeeper to jobs’ and ‘proactive strategic partner’. A key question is whether TSO-led programmes are better placed to combine these logics and roles in engaging employers to help vulnerable groups into decent sustainable employment. The article explores this through a case study of two projects in England. The findings highlight the challenges that TSOs face in having to appeal almost exclusively to a CSR logic and explores why this is the case.

From a humble experiment to tackle social problems, social enterprises (SEs) have transformed into key co-producers for a wide range of social services. However, despite an increasing interest in co-production, most SE studies in the field adopted a single-sided view of co-production, thereby limiting what co-production entails and how it works in SE. Drawing upon the New Public Governance (NPG) framework and an integrative view of co-production that embraces individual and collective action, we explored how the co-production process is enacted and designed from a service provider’s perspective and presented qualitative insights from eight SEs in providing work-integration services for people with disabilities. Our findings revealed strategic, operational and identity dimensions of co-production in SE. We also showed the different roles that SEs and their stakeholders play in co-production and how these affect the processes. We offer a new contribution to SE co-production literature by highlighting a multi-dimensional co-production process model of SEs in their quest to deliver social services.

Despite the large body of ALMP evaluations focussing on isolated training programmes for unemployed jobseekers, our understanding of potential reasons for (in)effectiveness remains limited. Specific training programmes aim to remediate particular supply- or demand-side barriers to employment experienced by targeted jobseekers. Consequently, this study unpacks training into four different types: (I) general classroom training (GCT) to enhance motivation and job search skills, (II) occupation-specific classroom training (OCT) addressing gaps in human capital, (III) non-contractual workplace training (NCWT) combining human capital acquisition with workplace experience, and (IV) contractual workplace training (CWT) additionally including a temporary wage subsidy to reduce hiring costs for employers. Using large-scale longitudinal register data, dynamic propensity score matching, and hazard models indicate positive effects of OCT participation, and particularly NCWT programmes allowing human and social capital accumulation in a workplace setting, on the transition into (stable) regular employment. In contrast, the non-effects for GCT participants highlight the need for more follow-up programmes, and the fact that, after controlling for the selective recruitment by employers of unemployed jobseekers with relatively strong profiles, CWT programme participants show moderate, short-lived positive effects which might inspire policymakers to reconsider programme assignment in light of cream-skimming by employers.

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.

Previous literature suggests that the gig economy and platform work pose challenges to social policy, including the welfare entitlement issues caused by workers’ ambiguous occupational status. Focusing on the government’s regulatory role, this study investigates platform workers’ occupational welfare (OW) by conducting in-depth interviews with forty-six food delivery workers in Hong Kong. The evidence reveals workers’ occupational risks resulting from platforms’ algorithmic devices and the misclassification of independent contractors. The denied access to private occupational pensions was considered acceptable by workers because of the perceived irrelevance of OW. While interviewees emphasised time-based flexibility as a key intangible benefit, the shifting business costs to self-employed workers was highlighted as a disadvantage. A policy dilemma appears between strengthening state regulation/protection and maintaining workers’ temporal autonomy. Arguably, the platformisation of work is translated into the gigification of OW, disentitling platform workers’ employer-provided welfare and labour protection. Platforms possess monopolising power over workers, the state displays weak regulatory power to monitor platforms, and workers’ occupational citizenship is undermined by the government’s minimal intervention. This study contributes to the literature by linking OW to platform work and revealing how the gig economy reshapes social policy, empirically offering a worker-centred analysis of OW in Hong Kong.