The Social Policy Digest is a major online resource providing up-to-date listings of developments across the whole range of UK and pan-European social policy issues - including links to source materials and commentary. The Digest is published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Policy Association.

The Social Policy Digest is a major online resource providing up-to-date listings of developments across the whole range of UK and pan-European social policy issues - including links to source materials and commentary. The Digest is published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Policy Association.

A consensus has developed in political and also media circles that in Britain over recent decades social mobility has been in decline. According to the consensus view, as construed in political circles, educational policy is seen as the crucial instrument for increasing mobility. This article shows how the consensus emerged from the research of a group of economists into intergenerational income mobility. It is argued that, primarily on account of various limitations of the available data, the economists’ finding of declining mobility is open to question; and, further, that, because no explicit distinction is made in their work between absolute and relative rates of mobility, its reception, among politicians especially, has been attended by considerable confusion. An alternative to the consensus view is put forward, based on extensive research by sociologists into social class mobility, which is seen as better capturing the intergenerational transmission of economic advantage and disadvantage. This research indicates that the only recent change of note is that the rising rates of upward, absolute mobility of the middle decades of the last century have levelled out. Relative rates have remained more or less constant back to the inter-war years. According to this alternative view, what can be achieved through education, whether in regard to absolute or relative mobility, appears limited.

In the past two decades, the question of how pension systems should be designed to offer ‘adequate and sustainable pensions for all’ has been raised. As a result, European pension systems, in which market principles in general have played a marginal or even negligible role in the past, were redesigned, with market-based pensions becoming part of the pension calculation norm, i.e. the institutionalised and nationally defined target level for old-age protection. However, since the hybrid pension systems are institutionalised very differently, pension systems’ ingredients, characteristics and nexus are far from being homogeneous, and the role of market principles in hybrid systems differs. These differences significantly determine the degree of social protection of the various social citizens and the number of future pensioners with adequate pensions. An illustrative comparison of the contrasting Dutch and German institutional setups indicates differences in the manner in which market principles have been strengthened in the pension system, and the related effects these differences have on social-risk spreading.

One of the consequences of the post-2008 global economic crisis is that it has thrust into the public spotlight the issue of state provision for corporations, putting paid to the myth that capitalism and businesses could ultimately be more profitable, more efficient and more competitive without state interference and direct support. The reality is that corporations of every size and within every sector depend on government support in some way. Hence, while the measures taken by governments in response to the global crisis have been exceptional in their scale, they are not exceptional by design. Rather, direct and indirect state support to corporations – referred to here as corporate welfare – is commonplace and is deeply embedded within the state's operations with various forms of assistance being delivered through social policies. In such an environment, the fact that social policy has very little to say about ‘corporate welfare’ is a serious omission. Bringing corporate welfare into social policy analysis reinforces the potential defence of the welfare state and, at the same time, increases our understanding of how best to balance the needs of private businesses with those of citizens on the one hand, and the burden of paying for welfare on the other. To this end, this paper argues for a deeper recognition, understanding, consideration and embedding of corporate welfare in social policy analysis. The first half of the paper advances conceptually the analysis of corporate welfare, mapping corporate and social welfare along a continuum. The second half provides some empirical evidence of the relative size of corporate and social welfare provision in a number of OECD countries.

Contemporary policies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will have distributive consequences and thus implications for the scope and remit of social policy. This paper studies current carbon mitigation policies and their distributive impacts. It considers a range of current and proposed social programmes to ameliorate these impacts, before proposing alternatives. This argument is pursued in two parts according to whether emissions are conceived and accounted within a production or a consumption framework. The first part works within the Kyoto policy framework, critiques the present suite of policies and suggests alternative policy scenarios that may better marry together the goals of carbon reduction and social equity. The second half justifies and operationalises a broader focus on all GHGs emitted by British consumers, whether directly or embodied in goods and services. It argues that to target these will require going beyond the current policy paradigm to develop more radical policies to modify preferences and behaviour, and to constrain total consumption demand. It then speculates on ways that new social policy programmes might combine the pursuit of these goals together with social equity.

The use of behavioural economics to inform policy has over recent years been captured by those who advocate nudge interventions. Nudge is a non-regulatory approach that attempts to motivate individual behaviour change through subtle alterations in the choice environments that people face. It is argued in this article that government interventions ought to be more overt than that traditionally advocated by nudge adherents, and that governments should principally attempt to influence behaviour if the acts of those targeted are causing harm to others. With this in mind, governments can use the findings of behavioural economics, including present bias and loss aversion, to inform where and how to regulate directly against undesirable private sector activities. This behavioural economic-informed method of regulation is hereby termed budge, to indicate that, rather than nudging citizens, behavioural economics might be used more appropriately in the public sector to help inform regulation that budges harmful private sector activities.

There is a large consensus among international organisations (e.g., United Nations and the World Bank) in considering Early Childhood Care and Education a prominent policy to equalise opportunities. Moreover, it is common opinion that interventions in early childhood aiming at equalising ‘opportunities’ rather than ‘outcomes’ will overcome political dissent. These two claims draw upon a particular interpretation of the work of contemporary egalitarian philosophers, as well as a number of studies in both developed and developing countries, finding higher benefits for disadvantaged children. Despite the tradition of analysing welfare provision from an equality perspective, the shift towards early childhood education as an equality policy has not yet fully been analysed. We critically examine the consensus advocated by international organisations regarding Early Childhood Care and Education as key to ‘levelling the playing field’ and suggest that the first claim (early childhood as greatest equaliser) should be considered with caution. We also argue that the alleged consensus on this claim may lead to a depoliticisation of social policy.

Kevin Farnsworth (this volume) exhorts us to recognise that corporations (by which he means any private company regardless of its ownership structure) are recipients of welfare provision in various forms: financial and in-kind, direct and indirect. He argues that a recognition of this by businesses, governments and the social policy community can foster greater complementarity in corporate and individual welfare measures and also potentially legitimise a greater tax contribution from these businesses towards public expenditure.

Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.

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.

Education is crucially important for later outcomes but has received limited attention in comparative research on welfare states. In light of this, we present an exploratory analysis of education systems across fourteen EU countries and the US. This builds on existing work on educational institutions, educational outcomes and welfare regimes. We focus on institutional features associated with inequality of educational opportunity, including academic selection, tracking and public/private provision; on educational outcomes; and on education expenditure. Our quantitative analysis identifies four clusters of countries: the Nordic, Continental, Mediterranean and English-speaking, which bear similarities to those identified in the welfare states literature. Each ‘education regime’ is associated with particular institutional features, educational outcomes and levels of public expenditure. Our analysis suggests that further comparative research on education, viewed as a key component of the welfare state, is warranted.

With targeted childcare initiatives and welfare-to-work programmes policy-makers have sought to address employment activation of lone mothers and negative outcomes for children in lone parent households. The present study examines non-parental childcare use and maternal employment among children living in lone and co-parent family situations at ages three and four and emotional and behavioural difficulties at ages four and five. The results demonstrate that negative outcomes associated with lone motherhood are explained largely by mother's age, education, material circumstances and area deprivation; and that maternal employment does not relieve lone mothers’ disadvantages in a way that alleviates the risks of difficulties to their children. However, in any family constellation, mainly group-based formal pre-school childcare does have a positive impact on child difficulties compared to drawing on informal childcare arrangements as main provider. In addition, and specifically for the difficulties of children in lone mother family situations, any non-parental childcare – formal or informal − for at least twenty-five hours per week is beneficial. Study findings support policy agendas which tackle families’ material hardship beyond promoting mothers’ employment, and through investment in formal childcare provision, and also through arrangements allowing lone mothers to divide their weekly load of childcare with another main provider.

The ‘unitary household’ lives on in policymakers’ assumptions about couples sharing their finances. Yet financial autonomy is seen as a key issue in gender relations, particularly for women. This article draws on evidence from semi-structured individual interviews with men and women in thirty low-/moderate-income couples in Britain. The interviews explored whether financial autonomy had any meaning to these individuals; and, if so, to what extent this was gendered in the sense of there being differences in men's and women's understanding of it. We develop a framework for the investigation of financial autonomy, involving several dimensions: achieving economic independence, having privacy in one's financial affairs and exercising agency in relation to household and/or personal spending. We argue that financial autonomy is a relevant issue for low-/moderate-income couples, and that women are more conscious of tensions between financial togetherness and autonomy due to their greater responsibility for managing togetherness and lower likelihood of achieving financial independence. Policymakers should therefore not discount the aspirations of women in particular for financial autonomy, even in low-/moderate-income couples where there remain significant obstacles to achieving this. Yet plans for welfare reform that rely on means testing and ignore intra-household dynamics in relation to family finances threaten to exacerbate these obstacles and reinforce a unitary family model.

In a number of countries, the state has become more closely involved in helping low-income families with children to make ends meet – including those with low earnings as well as out-of-work families. The adequacy of such support can be assessed against benchmarks measuring the additional cost of a child in households that maintain spending at a level sufficient to participate adequately in society. A socially defined minimum income standard provides an empirically based benchmark, which allows more meaningful measurement of adequacy than measures based on relative income or actual spending patterns.

Using evidence from the Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom, this paper considers the extent to which the UK state covers the additional cost of having children for non-working and low-earning families respectively. It finds that the present system has come close to covering this cost for some low-income families, but has started to withdraw from this position. The paper concludes by considering advantages and pitfalls for countries of adopting targeted forms of support for children focused on income adequacy. Such support can help working as well as non-working families escape poverty, but also makes them heavily dependent on state transfers to make ends meet.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are respected cross-national studies of pupil achievement. They have been specifically designed to study how countries’ educational systems are performing against one another, and how this is changing over time. These are, however, politically sensitive issues, where different surveys can produce markedly different results. This is shown via a case study for England, where apparent decline in PISA test performance has caused policymakers much concern. Results suggest that England's drop in the PISA ranking is not replicated in TIMSS, and that this contrast may be due to data limitations in both surveys. Consequently, I argue that the current coalition government should not base educational policies on the assumption that the performance of England's secondary school pupils has declined over the past decade.

Rising prison numbers and high rates of re-offending illustrate the need for criminal justice reform. In the social care sector, the ‘personalisation revolution’ has resulted in the near eradication of long-term, institutional care for the majority of people with disabilities and many frail older people, increasing satisfaction. This paper examines what this has entailed and considers the case for introducing personalisation in the criminal justice system. It concludes that criminal justice reformers can learn from the social care experience and suggests how personalisation might fit within the current criminal justice reform agenda. However, introducing personalisation will pose significant challenges, perhaps the biggest being the need to change criminal justice culture.

In The Pinch, David Willetts (2010: xv) attracted attention by asking whether ‘the boomers have been guilty of a monumental failure to protect the interest of future generations’. This was just the latest contribution to a long running concern of social policy analysts about horizontal equity and generational fairness. Using OECD data from 1980–2007, in the first part of this paper we show that there is no evidence that social expenditure has been shifting in favour of the retired at the expense of children, except perhaps recently in some Nordic countries. For the UK, we have created a time-series using the published articles since 1977 and the micro data sets since 1994/5 from the annual Office for National Statistics analyses of the Effect of Taxes and Benefits on Household Incomes and used it to analyse trends in the redistributive impact of cash benefits, direct and indirect taxes and services on the retired and households with children and across the income distribution. The analysis shows how the relative support for the retired versus children has changed over time, which elements have contributed to the changes and for which part of the income distribution. There has been a small shift in final income in favour of the retired but it was not the result of changes in taxes, benefits or services in kind but rather a change in the original income distribution in favour of the retired.