This article attempts to describe a major debate in turn of the century social reform through a close reading of the published works of Charles Booth, J.A. Hobson, William Beveridge, A.C. Pigou and others. My aim is to reconstruct the emergence and elaboration of a theory of labour market disorganisation, understood as the absence of effective norms governing employment relationships in urban labour markets subject to chronic over-supply. In so doing I shall take issue with a tendency in the historiography of social policy to fragment this debate into the development of two distinct conceptual frameworks corresponding to the social problems of poverty and unemployment more or less as we know them today.

This paper, based on an exploratory study of households in an English south coast town, argues that main income source is a significant factor to be taken into account when distinguishing between households. The research was triggered by information drawn from the 1981 Census showing that less than half the population of Great Britain experienced a direct relationship between current paid employment and income. It suggests that generalisations based on an assumption that household income drawn mainly from paid employment is the norm, marginalise more than half the population. The study draws attention to some of the issues highlighted when the focus of research is on sources of income. These are presented as supplementing, rather than negating, views from other perspectives. This exploratory study highlights additional insights having implications for social policy, while acknowledging that each merits more detailed attention.

This paper studies equity in the distribution of primary health care and domiciliary care for elderly people. The main data source is the 1980 GHS which has been linked to local authority data. An equitably distributed service is defined as one in which only variables which measure respondent's need for the service provide a significant explanation of whether the respondent receives the service. In the case of primary health care we find that for a number of groups defined by gender and age, economic and demographic variables have significant explanatory power. For two groups (males under 41 and females between 40 and 60), need was the only significant variable. For domiciliary care not only are variables which relate to the respondent's demographic and economic status significant but also variables which are concerned with local authorities' policies concerning supply. In general neither service is distributed equitably in the sense defined.

As a result of changes to the financial regime for housing associations, affordability has become a major issue of debate in social rented housing in Britain. This paper assesses the implications of trying to construct a finance system for housing associations based on a regime of ‘affordable rents’ and the ‘safety net’ of Housing Benefits but with the state declining to define the central concept of affordability. Using examples of a number of Western countries, and empirical evidence from the sector in Scotland, the present position is criticised, and a route out of the policy vacuum is suggested. This is founded on the premise that housing is a means rather than an end, within a broader social policy. Given the political constraints, one solution lies in studies of the expenditure patterns and standards of living of different groups of housing association tenants, and in the creation of a sector-specific organisational subsidy to be available in addition to the usual producer- and consumer-subsidies.