This article investigates the influence of partnership status on older men's involvement in social organisations, drawing on qualitative research. Men are found to be highly resistant to participation in organisations that cater primarily for the needs of older people. Older divorced and never-married men are more susceptible to social isolation and poor health than married men. This could be ameliorated by membership of such establishments, yet their resistance is the greatest. Policy implications focus on identifying and responding to appropriate provision of organisational and communal activities for ageing men, particularly those who spend their later years without a partner.

This paper is concerned with young people's understanding of the welfare state; who and what is it for, and what is their relation to it? It is argued that such qualitative research into these questions is not common. Exploring these issues increases our knowledge of the presence that ideas and discourses about welfare states have in young people's understanding of the social world. Qualitative approaches such as the one adopted in this paper can tap into meanings and perceptions that young people have in relation to the welfare state that can be glossed over with more quantitative concerns with ‘attitudes’.

This paper, the first of a new series of ‘Briefing’ papers, describes the challenges encountered by the transition from state-socialism to what may be broadly described as a capitalist social democracy in one Central and Easter European country, Hungary. It considers the policy responses to a variety of challenges in the social security, employment and social welfare fields faced with a wave of impoverishment that followed the disintegration of state socialism from the late 1980s.

In 1996, the USA became the first major democracy to eliminate individual entitlement to the social safety net. The reforms introduced in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act are briefly outlined in this editorial article, which, drawing on the papers assembled in this themed section, considers the consequences of the legislation, both positive and negative, and seeks to explain why the new policy regime seems likely to prove resilient.

This article describes the 1996 reform of US welfare and reviews its consequences, concluding that the evidence so far is encouraging, but that the full effects of reform are still unknown. It demonstrates how much the essential character of US welfare has altered: the emphasis on changing behaviour rather than making cash payments; the shift in responsibility from federal government to frontline administrators; the move to discretionary rather than rights based decision-making; and the stress on performance rather than on process. Finally, it notes that the language of political debate takes little account of what has already been achieved.

Making a success of welfare reform has as much to do with implementation as with policy design. The experience in Wisconsin and New York generalises too much of the US, with states divided into those successfully implementing work-based reform, those incapacitated by partisan divisions and those that have never seriously framed welfare policy. Three decisions are key: the degree of toughness, the amount of programme integration; and the locus of administrative control which are shaped by long standing differences in political culture, moralistic, individualistic and traditionalistic. States adopting a moralistic approach to policy administration generally achieve most success.

This article sifts the evidence to explain why welfare caseloads have fallen so markedly in the US since 1993. In particular, it seeks to explain the discrepancy between studies that identify welfare reform as the principal explanatory factor and those that emphasise the buoyant economy. Analyses that prioritise welfare are shown to be mis-specified while a comparative analysis of all 51 states shows a strong link between welfare trends and macroeconomic performance. The expansion of Earned Income Tax Credit has also contributed to the fall in welfare caseloads.

The Fragile Families Study, a survey of 5,000 children representative of all non-marital births in US cities with populations of over 200,000, provides new evidence on the characteristics of unmarried parents and their children. Initial analyses reported in this article reveal that the typical unmarried mother is in her early twenties and cohabiting at the birth of her children. Almost one third are Hispanic and 51 per cent non-Hispanic black. The great majority of unwed parents are committed to each other and their children at the time of birth but most are poorly equipped to support themselves and their children.

Falling welfare rolls in the US has focussed attention on those remaining on the caseload, variously termed the ‘hard to serve’ or ‘difficult to employ’. Using data from the first three years of the Women's Employment Study, a sample of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) recipients drawn in an urban county in Michigan, this article examines the barriers that inhibit people moving off welfare. The analysis indicates that the kinds of skill deficits and other personal problems experienced by welfare recipients are not frequently and systematically addressed within the rapid-employment, welfare to work models widely implemented across the USA.

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act required reauthorisation by September 30, 2002. This article describes and explains the political machinations that meant that as of November 2002, this had not occurred. Copious research fed the consensus that the 1996 reforms had been a success and, in the context of a muted debate that lacked vision, political expediency ruled the day. While minor deficiencies of the system may be tackled in 2003, for the most part the major weaknesses will probably endure.

R. Blank and R. Haskins (eds) (2001), The New World of Welfare, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC.

K. Weaver (2001), Ending Welfare as We Know It, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC.