This report covers the period October2001 to December 2002: the fifth yearand part of the sixth year of the ESRCCentre for Analysis of Social Exclusion.■ During 2002, the Centre’s work duringits first five years was positively reviewed,and ESRC funding was renewed for afurther five years,...

Twenty-five years ago, in a small closed-down shop inHighbury, the idea of helping some people into workthrough their own bootstraps was tried out in some ofLondon’s poorest communities. It relied on the motivationand basic willingness to learn of people out of work and inneed. The missing...

We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit marketimperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, andhistory, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

In this paper we provide evidence on how the UK government’s welfarereforms since 1998 have affected the material well-being of children in lowincomefamilies. We examine changes in expenditure patterns and ownership ofdurable goods for low- and higher-income families between the...

When the centre-left government came into power in Germany in 1998, a core promise of the new Chancellor, Schroeder, was to reduce the lack of jobs and to increase welfare. Facing persistently increasing unemployment rates from then on, the government finally launched “Hartz IV” in 2004; the...

Until 2004, German long-term unemployed received a tax-financed benefit (Arbeitslosenhilfe)which exceeded social assistance for the disabled (Sozialhilfe). This has beenchanged by the recent reform known as “Hartz IV”: Effective from 2005, long-termunemployed on the one hand (who are no more...