Health, Education and Welfare Economics
Social Murder?
Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK
Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book reveals the shocking impact of austerity policies on life expectancy and offers an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy and reduce health inequality.
Credit crunch health care
How economics can save our publicly funded health services
The credit crunch continues to threaten publicly-funded health care. In this timely and accessible book, Cam Donaldson considers value for money in the NHS and what can be achieved through reform and priority setting.
The Marketisation of Welfare-To-Work in Ireland
Governing Activation at the Street-Level
This book offers Ireland’s introduction of a welfare-to-work market as a case study that speaks to wider international debates in social and public policy about the role of market governance in intensifying the turn towards more regulatory and conditional welfare models on the ground.
Money for Everyone
Why We Need a Citizen's Income
This much-needed book analyses the social, economic and labour market advantages of a Citizen's Income in the UK. It also contains international comparisons and links with broader issues around the meaning of poverty and inequality, making a valuable contribution to the debate around benefits.
Understanding the Cost of Welfare
A substantial, authoritative, third edition of this important textbook about the impact of economic priorities and pressures on social policies at a time when neo-liberal arguments for reducing the burden of welfare are more dominant than ever before.
Balancing the skills equation
Key issues and challenges for policy and practice
Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce.
Financial Inclusion
Critique and Alternatives
Rajiv Prabhakar brings together the typically exclusive views of supporters and critics to present a nuanced, critical analysis of ‘financial inclusion’. Addressing issues including the ‘poverty premium’, financial capability and housing, this dialogue advances crucial public, academic and policy debates and proposes alternative paths forward.
The Poverty of Nations
A Relational Perspective
This book examines poverty in the context of the economy, society and the political community, considering how states can respond to issues of inequality, exclusion and powerlessness. Drawing on examples in both rich and poor countries, this is an accessible contribution to the debate about the nature of poverty and responses to it.
The poverty trade-off
Work incentives and income redistribution in Britain
Two strategies that governments have to help people on low incomes - providing them with financial support directly, and encouraging them to earn more - generally conflict. This report provides new evidence on the trade-off between redistributing income and improving work incentives.
FREE PDF version available online at www.jrf.org.uk
Household spending in Britain
What can it teach us about poverty?
Much of the recent policy debate surrounding poverty in Britain focuses on income as a measure of living standards. In this report we consider one alternative to income for measuring poverty that has been largely overlooked in the mainstream poverty debate in the UK: namely household expenditure. Free PDF version available at www.jrf.org.uk
The persistence of poverty across generations
A view from two British cohorts
The recent focus on reducing child poverty stems mainly from worries about the future consequences of poverty on children's later achievement. This report explores the link between childhood poverty and poverty later in life, and asks whether this link has grown stronger or weaker in recent decades. Free PDF available at www.jrf.org.uk
Why We Need Welfare
Collective Action for the Common Good
Explains the challenges that collective welfare faces, and explores the complexities involved in delivering it, including debates about who benefits from welfare and how and where it is delivered.