The study is aimed at exploring the influencing factor of wages among social service workers (SSWs) through a cross-country analysis. Using Luxembourg Income Study data, two aspects are emphasised: first, the trends and patterns of wage levels among SSWs. Second, the determining factors that influence their low wages at a cross-national level and how those factors are intersectionally intertwined to exacerbate the wage level. Three significant findings are confirmed: a universal gendered wage gap; a more significant wage gap for those on part-time and/or fractured contracts and employed in the private sector; and a substantial association between a higher education and higher wages. Two policy concerns are raised for discussion: first, tackling the gendered wage gap and ensuring more secure employment, and a guaranteed living wage for those employed in the private sector. Second, enhancing the professionalism for empowering their effective choices in the labour market is essential.

The cost-of-living crisis that began in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and the attempted Russian invasion of Ukraine has major implications for social policy. In advanced industrial countries, this is the most dramatic cost-of-living crisis since the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s. In this contribution, we explore the inflation and social policy nexus to identify the nature and sources of inflation, its redistributive and policy implications, and the specific nature of the current cost-of-living crisis compared to two other recent crises: the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on advanced industrial countries and drawing on the available scholarship about these topics, we offer the background necessary to understand the challenges facing welfare states in times of dramatically high inflation. As a way to provide broad context to the present themed section, our discussion stresses the economic, social, and political dynamics shaping social policy adaptation to inflationary pressures.

The article discusses five literature strands’ approaches towards social protection systems in the context of climate crisis: Adaptive Social Protection, Just Transition, Green New Deal, Post-growth, and Eco-feminism. As we argue, these five strands are located on a spectrum between a green growth orientation and a green anti-capitalist orientation. Furthermore, they differ in terms of their problematisation of the climate crisis and have different perspectives on relevant actors, on world regions, and – most relevant in the context of social welfare – their conceptualisation of social protection. While Adaptive Social Protection emphasizes cash transfers and insurances, Green New Deal and Just Transition approaches focus more on redistribution and labour market policies, and Post-growth and Eco-feminist approaches more on universalist policies and systems. We argue that these literatures each have their weaknesses, but also offer urgent questions, concepts, and insights for further social policy research.

To date, practical and scholarly work on the interaction between formal and informal social protection has focused on crowding in and crowding out of informal social protection by formal social protection. However, little is known about the relationship between both forms of social protection in conditions where one form of social protection is more effective than the other, or both forms of social protection are effective and ineffective. This article empirically examines how both forms of social protection interact and conceptualises this relation under these conditions by drawing on ninety semi-structured interviews with households across fourteen cities in Pakistan. The study theorises the interaction of formal and informal social protection in five different ways. Based on this, the article argues for further research to explore the relationship between formal and informal social protection in different contexts for building scholarship and policy interventions to improve the lives of the vulnerable.

This paper intends to investigate the mutual benefits of examining sexual minority people’s rights in Hong Kong and Confucianism. It has four objectives. Firstly, it aims to discuss the components of Confucianism. Secondly, it seeks to explore three strategies for promoting Confucianism: ‘Ren’, ‘Li’, and ‘Ideal Society’. Thirdly, it aims to demonstrate how analysing these strategies can enhance our understanding of the relationship between sexual minority rights in Hong Kong and Confucianism. To achieve this objective, it undertakes two analytical tasks: first, to evaluate criticisms of efforts aimed at strengthening sexual minority people’s rights in Hong Kong through the lens of these three strategies; and second, to assess the potential usefulness of these strategies in exploring the compatibility between the sexual minority people’s ways of life and Confucianism. Finally, the paper aims to examine how studying sexual minority people’s rights in Hong Kong can contribute to the discussion of the Confucian welfare model.

Access to safe, clean and affordable water is a basic human right and a global goal towards which climate change poses new challenges that heavily impact the health and wellbeing of people across the globe and exacerbate or create new inequalities. These challenges are shaped by a number of geographical and social conditions that, apart from the risks of weather-driven impacts on water, include water governance and management arrangements in place, including pricing tariffs, and the interplay of social and economic inequalities. Building on examples from Australia, Scotland and England and Wales that illustrate access to water in different types of water provision systems, and regarding to aspects of access, quality and affordability, this paper explores the types of challenges related to water poverty in the context of climate crisis and reflects on the multiple dimensions of water poverty oriented social policy at the interplay of climate change associated risks.

This article highlights the interconnection between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) research and social policy research, and argues that a greater focus on the welfare needs of gender and sexual minority people can advance the defamilisation and familisation literature. While defamilisation and familisation studies have gained significant attention for examining whether individuals, especially women, have adequate opportunities to balance their work and caregiving responsibilities, most of them pay insufficient attention to the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in organising their caring and working life. This article addresses this research gap by undertaking three analytical tasks. Firstly, it explores the defamilisation and familisation risks faced by LGBTQ+ individuals. Secondly, it presents a ‘queer life mix framework’ to inform the selection of suitable welfare models to guide governments in tackling these risks. Thirdly, it demonstrates how the ideas of the queer life mix framework can be put into practice.

Developing an old-age service system that can meet the fast-growing needs of the aging population is challenging. It is increasingly recognised that community-level services should be pivotal in providing services to older people. In this article, the authors use the Chinese experience and argue that because the state is not clear how such a system should look like, all actors behave like entrepreneurs who strategise, take risks and search for a viable “business model”. The research draws upon in-depth interviews and focus groups in six cities in China collected in 2015-2016 and follow-up interviews in one community in three cities in 2021. The findings show that the service system has evolved into a dynamic entrepreneurial welfare mix that actively embraces the market. This research contributes to the theoretical development of the welfare mix. The authors also raised possible issues with such a direction of change in the conclusion.

Rising inflation in the Nordic societies has changed the living standards for many families. The situation differs not only between the four Nordic countries analysed, but even within each of the Nordic countries. The needs for intervention have varied. Several elements have been used to determine who is facing the most risks. This article shows how to combine automatic stabilisers with temporary policy interventions to deal with increased inflation in general or specific sub-elements (such as oil, natural gas). Focus is on the degree of and criteria for targeting. Possible distributional consequences of the adopted measures will be discussed. Lastly, the article considers whether the observed responses to the crisis have implications for the understanding of the Nordic welfare state model. The article investigates institutional, political and economic reasons for the variations in the interventions. The article concludes that in managing the crisis, the Nordic countries have adopted stronger targeting towards those considered to be in need, displaying some innovations in their social policy approach. Yet, one can trace a high degree of path-dependency, with the countries adhering to universalist principles, with an aim of redistributing resources.

‘Just transition’ is a concept originally developed by the labour movement to reconcile workers’ rights with the necessity to combat climate change. More recently, supra- and international organisations have also adopted this idea. However, it remains unclear to what extent these actors follow the eco-social ambitions of organised labour. In this article, we develop a conceptual framework to capture diverse just transition approaches by distinguishing between the goal, policy, and governance dimension. We apply a multi-method approach to gauge the extent of variation in the just transition conceptualisations of three actors: the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Union (EU). We identify a cleavage between the ILO where just transition refers to an ambitious eco-social agenda on the one hand, and the IMF’s emphasis on macroeconomic adaptation on the other. The EU takes up a middle position by promoting a ‘green growth’ strategy with medium emphasis on environmental and social risk mitigation.

The authors provide a scholarly conspectus of comparative studies involving Russian, EU8 and EU15 Welfare Polities. They elaborate the notion of the ‘welfare polity’ and its potential for enhancing comparative studies of welfare institutions, policies and practices. This is accompanied by an overview of trends in comparative studies involving Russian, EU8 and EU15 countries, along with a consideration of how comparative research involving these states can be strengthened. Gaps in the literature and evidence base, including systematic cross-national and temporal data on the design and implementation of social policies and social protection, are highlighted. A shared concern was found with the growth of division and exclusion exacerbated by global economic factors and by state-level policy shifts, a trend especially notable in Russian studies. Fruitful pointers for future research and international collaboration are indicated and the need for further comparative efforts emphasised at a challenging time for geopolitical relations.

Climate change is arguably the defining issue of our time, with global impacts. Yet to date, scholarship within social policy has remained relatively fragmented and disparate, leaving an urgent need to start comprehensively embedding environmental thinking across all domains of the discipline (Williams, 2021). Responding to this challenge, this paper draws together existing work at the nexus of social policy, the environment, and climate change. The paper then presents findings from workshops held with social policy scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, using these discussions to propose pathways to embed climate change within the discipline. The paper represents a significant contribution to knowledge within the field as it seeks to both broaden discussions about social policy and climate change; to identify theoretical and empirical relationships that exist between the two fields but have not been fully recognised in existing scholarship; and to bring new perspectives and voices into the discussion.

The recent polycrises of COVID-19, economic recession, and energy price increases have reinforced the critical importance of energy services – such as heating, information and communications technology, and refrigeration – to everyday societal functioning. Compromising access to these energy services, or energy poverty, limits social and economic development affecting education, health, and social participation. Energy poverty is impacted by climate change and climate-related policies – however, this nexus has been marginalised within social policy. We critically review literature at the intersection of climate change and energy poverty identifying policy approaches, tensions, and solutions of relevance for social policy. While tensions exist between efforts to mitigate climate change and energy poverty, climate-friendly mitigation of energy poverty requires better integration of social perspectives to disrupt current technical biases, recognising the characteristics and needs of individuals in energy poverty, and holistic governance approaches, especially involving the health and housing sectors.

The policy area addressing the climate crisis in the UK, ‘Net Zero’, will affect many aspects of people’s everyday life. Given that policy builds from where we are now, which for some (post austerity, and mid cost of living crisis) means in financial crisis, there is work to be done in enabling a socially inclusive Net Zero. In this article, we modify the Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix’s four forms of participation for social inclusion, drawing on the existing literature on the social risks of environmental policy, to articulate the risks of social exclusion in transition to Net Zero. This enables us to develop a ‘person-centred’ approach to understanding the risks of Net Zero, articulating the risks of exclusion, and who is likely to be affected by them. We conclude by outlining a framework for an inclusive transition, and commenting on the policy and research implications of our thinking.

Family background characteristics and educational resources are crucial in shaping individuals’ income and therefore a potential source of income inequality and inequality of opportunity. This article analyses inequalities in the Spanish diverse regions using data from the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Along this article we analyse the relevance of family background characteristics in shaping individuals’ opportunities as well as the role education plays in income inequality. Our findings show that family background characteristics are of great importance in shaping individuals’ performance and opportunities of achieving a certain level of income, well-being and education; also, educational variables at regional level, such as the education expenditure per student, are highly correlated to the levels of inequality. In view of the results, it would be advisable to implement public policies targeting vulnerable groups to ensure equal opportunities and invest in education given its potential as equalizer of income inequality.

Social policies’ responsiveness to rising inflation depends in large part on whether they contain automatic indexation mechanisms, which ensure that the real value of wages and benefits expands during inflationary periods. Here we compare how the indexation of Canadian and U.S. policies on pensions, minimum wages, and food security have affected their responsiveness to the recent cost-of-living crisis. Three main conclusions emerge from our analysis. First, automatic indexation is not necessarily a silver bullet to avoid policy drift. Second, automatic indexation and its design are not the only factors that matter to determine whether high inflation leads to policy drift. Finally, in times of higher inflation, social programs that lack automatic indexation can avoid policy drift, as long as a strong political consensus allows for ad hoc social policy expansion capable of offsetting the negative effects of inflations on social benefits.

In the last two decades, the Chinese government has made serious attempts to enhance social provision by contracting out social services. Empirical evidence suggests that openness and flexibility of resource allocation gradually decrease from Guangzhou in southern China to Beijing in northern China, amongst China’s three first-tier cities. This study further reveals that state–non-governmental organisation (NGO) relations vary not only across geographical locations but also amongst service sectors governed by government departments and mass organisations. The varied state–NGO relations across geographical locations and service sectors manifest the complexity of the state–NGO collaboration under China’s fragmented authoritarian governance system. Different local circumstances and diverse considerations of local officials involving vertical and horizontal lines of authority accounted for the variations and complexity from the eyes of NGO practitioners.

China adopted neoliberal approaches to improve the supply of quality social services in the early 2000s. How did the Chinese government manage the financial and quality risks of increasing the provision via government purchasing and how did it differ from other countries? The article examines the policy trajectory of early childhood education and care in China and Australia on this question. Policy analysis of the effect of purchasing on the cost to government and quality of services shows how both countries used subsidy arrangements to engage non-profit and private providers to expand supply. When faced with market risks, they both tightened regulations, but China differed in the speed and strength of their response, restricting the proportion of private providers. The findings have implications for understanding the risks of relying on market forces in other social service sectors, and how policy can effectively respond.