Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Wage Supplements and the New Poor Law -- 3 Wage Supplements and Poor Relief in the 1920s: Norfolk's Agricultural Labourers -- 4 Wage Supplements and Public Assistance in the 1930s: Lancashire's Cotton Weavers -- 5 Family Allowance, the Rediscovery of Poverty and Rejection of Means-tested Wage Supplements -- 6 Family Income Supplement: Reintroducing Means-tested Wage Supplements -- 7 Family Credit, Wage Suppression and the 'Think Tank'

Social Security and Wage Poverty is the first book to comprehensively examine debates about, and the practice of, the state supplementing wages. Chris Grover charts the historical development of such policies from prohibition in the 1830s and how opposition to it was overcome in the 1970s, thereby allowing the increasing supplementation of the wages of poorly paid working people. He draws upon original archival research to show that over time wage supplements have been seen as both deeply problematic for, and of great benefit to, the economy, and to the moral and social life of wage workers. In analyzing the political economy of wage supplements, Grover also deals with gendered assumptions about the role of women in wage work and 'the family', which have framed the use and critique of wage supplements. He focuses on Britain, but also examines wage supplements in New Zealand and the USA

This book examines key relationships between material circumstances and crime, and analyzes the areas of social policy - in particular social security and labour market policy - that are most important in terms of dealing with inequality at the lower end of the income hierarchy

Chris Grover critically reflects on the introduction of the Social Fund and its operation in the past two decades, engaging with the argument that was made in the 1980s that relieving need by way of loan was new in social security policy. Using primary data hitherto ignored by social policy research, he locates Social Fund loans in a lengthy history of debate about, and practice in, loaning poor relief and social security. Understanding this history will give a greater depth to our understanding of the state's purposes in relieving the poorest people as well as to our knowledge of contemporary.

ABSTRACTIn 2013 the UK government introduced a household benefit cap to restrict the benefit income of its poorest people. Although taking different forms, such restrictions are not new there. Drawing upon files held at the UK's National Archives, this article focuses upon the years 1935 to 1975 during which the main benefit restriction that operated was the wage stop. The wage stop affected claimants categorised as unemployed. As the article demonstrates, those claimants not expected to do wage‐labour, such as lone mothers and sick people, could also have their benefit limited, though not via the wage stop. The article examines these benefit restrictions through notions of discretion. In doing so, it engages with the misconception that the wage stop was wholly discretionary. And through discussion of the main decisions that were embedded in discretion demonstrates how the discretionary potential to mitigate the impact of benefit restrictions, was often constrained by broader state concerns with labour and social discipline. Consequently, the potential positive use of discretion was limited by a desire not to incentivise behaviours and lifestyles deemed problematic. Hence, like the operation of today's benefit cap, wage‐stopped households faced lives marked by poverty, by, for example, poor diets, and inadequate clothing and essential household items.

Before the introduction of the household benefit cap in the UK in 2013 the previous mechanism there limited the income of social assistance recipients was the wage stop, operating for four decades between 1935 and 1975. Similar to the benefit cap, the wage stop reflected and reproduced concerns with incentivising unemployed people to labour. This raises questions about why the wage stop was abolished in the mid-1970s when worries about unemployment continued, particularly its intersections with out-of-work benefits. It is widely argued that the abolition of the wage stop was a consequence of lobbying by the Child Poverty Action Group. Drawing upon records held at the UK's National Archives, this article argues that this is an over-simplified explanation that, first, ignores concerns with the wage stop that pre-dated the Child Poverty Action Group's criticism of it, including concerns within the assistance boards with its administration. And, second, while by the mid-1970s there was (albeit ambiguous) concern with the impacts of the wage stop, there was a shift in approach that emphasised the supplementation of low wages with social security benefits, rather than forcing social assistance below the assessed needs of households, as being a preferable means of ensuring the incentive to take wage-labour.

Britain's Household Benefit Cap restricts the amount of benefit income unemployed households can receive. In this article, it is examined using material held at the UK's National Archives recording debates about a proposal to introduce a similar policy – a benefit limit – in the first Thatcher Conservative government elected in 1979. It was rejected, but the Household Benefit Cap was introduced three decades later. The article locates debates about, and the practice of restricting benefit income, in perennial social security concerns with the financial incentive to do waged work. The article argues that while there are material differences that help explain the different policy outcomes in 1980 and 2010, they can primarily be explained by changing ideas about the roles of social security policy, including the development of the 'incentive paradigm' concerned with manipulating behaviour; a loss of concern with the hardship that would come with the introduction of a benefit restriction and a view that institutions other than the state are better placed to address poverty and buttress work incentives.

Drawing upon data held at the UK's National Archives, this article focuses upon the introduction of Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, which allowed local authorities in England and Wales to offer material assistance to families in order to prevent children being received into care or to facilitate their return from care to their families. To understand this development, the article frames its analysis in debates about the nature of the intellectual basis of post-WWII social welfare policy in Britain. Locating Section 1 support in idealist thought, the article argues that it should be understood as continuing classical liberal concerns with responsibility, self-sufficiency, and independence and constraining the size and scope of the state.