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...

It is increasingly recognised that improving the quality and quantity of children’s services isan essential part of any long-term strategy to tackle poverty and social exclusion amongchildren. As part of its wider programme to address child poverty in England, Save TheChildren commissioned...

Using data from several large scale longitudinal surveys, this paper investigates the relationship between older women‟s families histories and their personal incomes in later life in the UK, US and West Germany, By comparing three countries with very different welfare regimes, we seek to gain...

This paper examines the relationship between the family and work histories of olderwomen in the UK and their individual incomes in later life, using retrospective datafrom the first fifteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey. The associationsbetween women’s family histories and their...

Very little information exists about households’ longer-term movements betweentenures. Some cross-section datasets include information on length of stay in anyresidence but we have no systematic study of movement over time. This study usesthe British Household Panel Study to examine movements...

This paper argues that our understanding of income and poverty dynamicsbenefits from taking a life cycle perspective. A person’s age and familycircumstances – the factors that shape their life cycle – affect the likelihood ofexperiencing key life events, such as partnership formation,...

This paper examines the distribution of the “social wage” benefits inkind from welfare services, including the National Health Service, stateeducation, social housing, and personal social services. The currentGovernment has put a strong emphasis on improving public servicesand has begun to...