The government’s pensions Green Paper – A new contract for welfare:partnership in pensions – proposes fundamental changes to the UK’sretirement income system. Members of CASE and of the Department ofSocial Policy at LSE have looked at the likely implications of the reformsfor pensioner...

The Lisbon summit of the European Council in March 2000 declared the number ofpeople living in poverty and social exclusion in the European Union to beunacceptable, and called for steps to tackle the issue, beginning with the setting oftargets for particular indicators. The targets suggested...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act(PRWORA) of 1996 represents a dramatic change in the US welfare state.One of its key goals was to move lone mothers, even those with youngchildren, from welfare to work. Early evidence suggests that, in concertwith a strong...

Economic evaluation has an important role in helping to make decisionsabout the use of scarce resources in an explicit and rational manner, yeteconomic evaluation is not well-developed in many areas of socialwelfare. This paper looks at the reasons for this, focusing on whateconomists could do...

This paper takes as its starting point Henry Neuburger’s injunction that taxationmust be seen as a contribution to the maintenance of the welfare state, not as adead-weight burden. It sets recent developments in the UK tax ratio in thecontext of changes in public spending, particularly on...

In both Britain and the United States, people have been moving awayfrom the inner cities to suburban developments, often leaving behindconcentrations of poverty and decaying neighbourhoods. Anne Power’spaper focuses on the British situation. As Britain comes to terms with theimplications of...

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

This paper attempts to clarify the significance of reforms to disabilitybenefits proposed by the New Labour government in 1998, by settingthem in the context of the development of disability benefits since theearly 1970s. The first section charts the creation, extension andsubsequent series of...

This paper analyses the proposals contained in the Government GreenPaper, A New Contract for Welfare: Partnership in Pensions for low paidworkers and the potential of the new rules to guarantee a decent incomein old age. It discusses the general principles inherent in the design ofthe British...

Area-based polices have become a significant part of the new LabourGovernment’s approach to tackling social exclusion. This paper reviewsthe long-running debate about whether area-based policies can make asignificant impact on poverty and social exclusion. There is a strongtradition of...