The way we run urban neighbourhoods in Britain is a key to reversing social exclusion, crime and poor performance on almost every front in our cities. This study for the Social Exclusion Unit of seven models of neighbourhood management analyses the reason for its key position in the national...

We examine whether unemployment early in an individual's career influences her later employment prospects. We use six years of the LFS to create pseudo-cohorts and exploit cross-cohort variation in unemployment at school-leaving age to identify this. We find heterogeneous responses: for the...

A review of research evidence suggests that low levels of educational attainment are crucial in generating and sustaining social exclusion. Test scores at school are the most effective predictor of many adult outcomes. School attendance and soft skills are also important. Reviewing the factors...

In this paper we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialised countries to investigate the family gap in pay - the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the...

This article examines the role of family and the state in relation to the living standards of the elderly in East Asia. It tries to test whether familial arrangement according to Confucian ethics, which are still taken seriously in East Asia, secures the minimum standard of living for the...

This paper attempts to clarify the significance of reforms to disability benefits proposed by the New Labour government in 1998, by setting them in the context of the development of disability benefits in the early 1970s. The first two sections chart the creation, extension and subsequent...

Older men have experienced the largest falls in employment over the last twenty years. Two-fifths of men aged between 55 and 65 are without work, compared to one-fifth in 1979, equivalent to 600,000 fewer jobs. Older women have not shared in the general rise of female employment. This paper...

This paper examines the impact of the transition on living standards and welfare in the five Republics of former Soviet Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, along with the Republic of Azerbaijan. A broad definition of welfare is taken, including both...

This paper discusses the impact of growing joblessness and dwindling work opportunities on inner-city areas in America. The lack of low-skilled manual work in the inner city is linked to poverty, crime, family dissolution and the social life of neighbourhoods. The paper discusses this impact at...

Furthering equity as an achievable public policy objective is based on the ability to assess needs accurately, and distribute resources accordingly. This paper plots the development of the formulae governing resouce allocation in education, health and social housing, and charts their course as a...