In a world that is rapidly changing, increasingly connected and uncertain, there is a need to develop a shared applied policy analysis of welfare regimes around the globe. Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy is a series of books that addresses broad questions around how nation states and transnational policy actors manage globally shared challenges. In so doing, the book series includes a wide array of contributions, which discuss comparative social policy history, development and reform within a broad international context. Initially conceived during a meeting of the UK Social Policy Association Executive Committee in 2016, the book series invites innovative research by leading experts on all world-regions and global social policy actors and aims to fulfil the following objectives: it encourages crossdisciplinary approaches that develop theoretical frameworks reaching across individual world-regions and global actors; it seeks to provide evidence-based good practice examples that cross the bridge between academic research and practice; not least, it aims to provide a platform in which a wide range of innovative methodological approaches, may it be national case studies, larger-N comparative studies, or global social policy studies can be introduced to aid the evaluation, design, and implementation of future social policies.

In this expansive volume, Deeming brings together international experts from around the globe to share their latest research on reference budgets and minimum income standards. It combines historical case analyses, cross-national comparisons, and studies with a focus on policy and practice issues in no fewer than 23 original chapters. Collectively these contributions summarise the various achievements within the international research on reference budgets and minimum income standards to date. At the same time, they underline the importance of reference budgets and minimum income standard approaches for current debates over, for example, the measurement of needs across the life course, the future of social safety nets, and what family income levels are deemed socially acceptable. Deeming manages to present all of the above with a nod towards pertinent ideational changes in the emerging global social protection and sustainability paradigms. He also lays out how, going forward, governments may address the contemporary challenges of urban, rural, housing, in-work, energy, and food poverty in different socio-economic and cultural contexts.