Among older men in England from 1971 to 1981 the increase in the extent of those defined as disabled was of the same order as the increase in unemployment. Using Census data for the forty-six counties of England, changes in disability, retirement and economic activity are related to changes in unemployment. A substantial proportion of the overall increase in disability and the decline in economic activity is attributable to the general rise in unemployment.

Since the election of the Thatcher Government in 1979, public expenditure on the welfare state has undergone a series of changes. The nature of change has, however, often been obscured by the use of inadequate and misleading statistical data. This paper presents a systematic examination of public expenditure on education, health care, housing and social security over the period 1979/80 to 1984/85. It shows that, contrary to much political rhetoric, the major changes in the welfare state have not always arisen from reductions in programme expenditures, but from changes in the composition of expenditure. It is the latter that has often increased economic inequality and can be legitimately referred to as ‘restructuring’.

It has been argued that council house sales will contribute towards a more general process of residualization of public sector housing. Empirical evidence is presented in this context derived from surveys of purchasers and non-purchasers of council dwellings in the city of Aberdeen. This evidence confirms that purchasers and non-purchasers exhibit different socio-economic characteristics and after only four years of the Right to Buy legislation significant numbers of households in social classes I, II and III have left the public sector via the mechanism of sales. The small number of sales relative to the stock as a whole, however, has meant that the overall contribution of sales towards residualization has been small. This evidence from Aberdeen is compared to evidence from elsewhere and related to the varying pattern of sales across the country as a whole.

The recent discussion of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme in Britain in terms of the unfavourable demographic position early next century has highlighted how little attention is normally paid by British politicians and social policy analysts to population size and structure. Further, the attention is normally confined to the question of how policy should adapt to demographic change, rather than how to modify it, although Britain has an implicit policy of restricting family size. Britain is not alone in this but many countries show more concern about the future of their population and some wish to increase it. Among these is France. This article compares Britain and France: first, over the priority given to demographic issues by statesmen and academics; and second, over the advantages and problems seen in different demographic futures. It argues that family policy needs to be seen in a demographic context.

This paper examines the extent to which low household income influences access to primary health care in both the US and the UK. The basic approach is to ask whether, given data about a person's age, sex, and self-reported general health status and history, extra information about whether or not they come from a low-income household adds a statistically significant amount to the probability of their obtaining various amounts of primary medical care. The measure of primary medical care is derived from the number of physician visits and it, along with the other data, is drawn from the 1977 US National Medical Care Expenditure Survey and the 1980 UK General Household Survey. Although the two surveys cover different sample periods, they are similar enough to make comparisons between the two countries possible. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that low household income is not an important determinant of the actual use of primary health care resources. Only with subgroups of the low-income population (UK women and US relatively unhealthy individuals) does there appear to be a statistically significant effect, which is quite small in comparison to other factors.

Arguments about the harmful effects of government intervention in welfare issues, which seemed peripheral to the rapid expansion of state welfare in the twentieth century, have recently achieved the status of a new orthodoxy. This article examines the historical development of economic, administrative and ideological criticisms of state welfare in Britain and America, in order to identify the roots of this new orthodoxy. It finds that economic and administrative criticisms are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the rise of this new view, which ultimately rests on specific ideological beliefs about the propriety of state welfare.

‘Tax expenditures’ are public revenue losses which result from special allowances and reliefs given to various categories of taxpayer for reasons of economic and social policy. In 1983/4 tax expenditures in the personal income tax system cost nearly £11 billion which was equal to 35 per cent of revenue from personal income tax or 9 per cent of total public expenditure. This paper assesses their significance in the context of public expenditure and tax policy. It identifies those allowances and reliefs in the personal income tax system which may be regarded as tax expenditures, evaluates them and compares their cost with direct expenditures in similar areas. Many tax expenditures are inequitable and inefficient; and they are difficult for governments to control. If they were reduced some public expenditures could be protected from cuts, or the general burden of income tax could be reduced.

Frequent increases in the real value of National Health Service (NHS) patient charges have been made since the Conservative Party's return to office in 1979. For those patients subject to these charges the increases have led to a substantial reduction in the level of subsidization of the cost of the service. The rationale for the subsidization of health care is shown to be unrelated to ‘ability to pay’ considerations. Consequently the ‘backdoor privatization’ of these services is inconsistent with the objectives of the NHS even though the Government has continually committed itself to these objectives. Alternative policies to increasing patient charges are suggested which would encourage the efficient use of NHS resources without compromising NHS objectives.

The growing awareness of the importance of lifestyle factors in the prevention of ill-health has stimulated a number of policy studies. But of the main causes of preventable ill-health alcohol misuse has been comparatively neglected, in spite of the fact that it also has wider implications for a range of other social problems. This article attempts to fill this gap by charting the development of alcohol policy and the alcohol issue over the last three decades. The main intention is to explain why the policy has taken its present form. At the same time it sheds some light on why a more comprehensive alcohol policy has been rejected by successive UK governments. As a framework, three potential explanations for this rejection are outlined: opposition by powerful interest groups; the hostility of voters and politicians; and opposition by government bureaucracies. The analysis thus provides an opportunity to test the relevance of these theories in an area of policy which has wide implications for social welfare.

The distributional impact of different transfer programmes is one of the basic criteria on which decisions such as those on resource allocation may be based. This paper examines the spread over the UK size distribution of different transfers, using data from the Family Expenditure Survey (FES). In addition to analysing the distribution of current transfer receipts by actual current income, estimates are developed which allow the spread of annual receipts by annual income to be examined. The results show that the short-term unemployment and sickness benefits have a considerably greater degree of concentration towards the bottom of the distribution than some previous studies have indicated. This is particularly true for current income, but even for annual receipts and income the degree of concentration is greater than might have been expected. The impression that these benefits have a very low redistributive effect may have had a major influence on recent policy decisions. This is shown to be particularly misleading in the case of unemployment benefit.

Social segregation in public housing has usually been explained in institutional terms by reference to the policies and practices of the local authority. This paper draws on data from a household survey of new council tenants in Glasgow to demonstrate that the outcome of the rationing process cannot be attributed to factors originating at the level of the institution alone. The research examines stages of the allocation process, in particular the behaviour of applicants in expressing preferences and their propensity to reject offers, as well as institutional factors. It is suggested that household choice behaviour, which is related to income, is important in determining social patterns in council housing.

Marxist accounts of welfare have been characterized by a critical view of social administration and an uncritical view of the concept of the ‘welfare state’. In this paper both these views are questioned. We explore the problems associated with basing analyses of welfare on the ‘welfare state’ and the limitations of certain criticisms of the ‘social administration tradition’. We conclude that whatever the merits of the more substantive elements in Marxist accounts of welfare, there are problems associated with their assumptions about social administration and the ‘welfare state’.

Differentials in unemployment among young adult males are shown to be particularly associated with two factors: housing tenure and early childbearing. Even after controlling for factors such as social class and area of residence, local authority tenants have unemployment rates two or three times as high as owner-occupiers of a similar age. For movers between tenures these differentials are even greater; movers from owner-occupation to local authority tenancy have four times the unemployment rate of those moving in the opposite direction. Large differentials by the family situation of young people are also found, with childless married couples having particularly low unemployment rates. These two aspects are connected by the effect of childbearing filtering couples into different tenures. Finally, the implications for increased social polarization between the two major tenures, and the likely effect on future tenure levels, are discussed.

Rowntree is widely regarded as having originated in 1901 the ‘scientific’ definition of poverty as the minimum income level required for physical subsistence. He is quoted as defining ‘secondary poverty’ above this income level as mismanagement. Critics of this approach confuse Rowntree's use of concepts with his discussion of causes, and they overlook Rowntree's own explanation that his concept of poverty was relativistic life-style, and that his distinction between primary and secondary poverty was a heuristic device to convince individualists that the life-style of the poor was at least in part caused by low income and not by improvidence. Townsend's major life work in defining and measuring poverty as relative deprivation is usually presented as overthrowing Rowntree's paradigm. The paper shows that Rowntree's early views and methods have been widely misunderstood by later authors, and it argues that the evidence necessitates a reconsideration of Rowntree's position, which would show Townsend's achievement as a paradigmatic shift not from absolutist to relativistic models of poverty but from relativistic models based on standards prescribed by expert observers to relativistic models based on standards derived from the whole population by social surveys.

This paper discusses issues raised by the uneven expansion of private health care in Britain in recent years. The problems being experienced by the industry have exposed divisions in the private health care industry and have provoked criticisms of the Government and requests for a greater degree of state support for, and regulation of, the industry. The paper therefore examines the scope for changes of government policy to facilitate further expansion. It argues that few of the alternatives are either technically adequate, in terms of solving the private sector's problems, or politically feasible, in the sense of being electorally justifiable. It concludes that policies to further private sector expansion could be implemented only at the cost of the private sector's independence, or at the expense of the Government's commitment to the NHS.

This paper describes housing policy in the Netherlands and the current crisis over subsidies. It argues that the development of the welfare state, the housing system, and recent retrenchment contain contradictions which reflect the distinctive nature of Dutch politics and social structure. In particular, it suggests that the existence of pillarized social cleavages has been influential in the growth of a progressive welfare state, in providing a secure base for social rented housing, and in sustaining high levels of support for spending on housing subsidies. Expenditure cutbacks and measures for administrative rationalization are outlined, and some of the contradictory effects on housing policy are examined.