Public Services and the Welfare State

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    Beyond nudging: it’s time for a second generation of behaviourally-informed social policy

Beyond nudging: it’s time for a second generation of behaviourally-informed social policy

Insights from experimental research in the behavioural sciences offer a powerful impetus to reject punitive welfare reform. Katherine Curchin explains that findings from psychology, behavioural economics and behavioural finance concerning decision-making by people experiencing poverty point to the importance of alleviating material hardship by improving the social safety net; trying to remedy the character of individuals through benefit sanctions […]

November 10th, 2016|Featured, Public Services and the Welfare State|1 Comment|
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Whatever happened to compassionate Conservatism?

As with David Cameron before her, Theresa May took office as Prime Minister offering a government for all, rather than for the ‘privileged few’. Hugh Bochel reflects on the fate of ‘compassionate Conservatism’ during the Coalition government, and asks if it provides any clues as to how the May government might address social policy.

 

Both before and following his election as leader, […]

November 9th, 2016|British and Irish Politics and Policy, Featured, Hugh Bochel, Party politics and elections, Public Services and the Welfare State|3 Comments|
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What do we mean by the ‘underclass’?

Recent evidence points to the failure of the ‘troubled families’ programme launched by the Coalition government in 2011, a programme designed to intervene in the lives of the estimated 120,000 most behaviourally anti-social families in England and Wales. As John Macnicol argues, the concept of the ‘underclass’ underpinning this initiative has a long history, and has resurfaced in various […]

November 3rd, 2016|British and Irish Politics and Policy, Economy and Society, Featured, John Macnicol, LSE Comment, Public Services and the Welfare State, Uncategorized|2 Comments|
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    Book Review: The Right to Buy? Selling Off Public and Social Housing by Alan Murie

Book Review: The Right to Buy? Selling Off Public and Social Housing by Alan Murie

Introduced under the Thatcher government, ‘Right to Buy’ has had a formative effect on housing in the UK for the past 35 years. In The Right to Buy? Selling Off Public and Social Housing, Alan Murie examines the policy’s long-standing and ongoing impact, and considers the implications of its more recent extension. While more explicit political analysis of the […]

October 30th, 2016|Book Reviews, British and Irish Politics and Policy, Economy and Society, Featured, John Picton, Public Services and the Welfare State, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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    Ageing in an era of neoliberalism: the impact of extending working lives

Ageing in an era of neoliberalism: the impact of extending working lives

Reforms have abolished mandatory retirement and raised state pension age, all while the government’s pre-occupation with extending private pension provisions lacks critical analysis. These changes have various implications for the UK workforce, explain Jason Powell and Paul Taylor.

Employment in later life has changed dramatically since the formation of the welfare state some seventy years ago. Welfare principles indicative of William […]

October 3rd, 2016|Economy and Society, Featured, Jason Powell, Paul Taylor, Public Services and the Welfare State|3 Comments|
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    Why the market model for the care of people with learning disabilities is inviable

Why the market model for the care of people with learning disabilities is inviable

The high debt levels in the independent care sector, and the reliance of services on it, mean that the quality of care is being compromised. Lee Humber explains how the market model for the care and support for people with learning disabilities came to change in recent years, and why the current system is, at best, economically inviable.

There has […]

September 30th, 2016|Featured, Lee Humber, Public Services and the Welfare State|2 Comments|
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    Childhood Obesity: The biggest changes come from incremental steps not silver bullets

Childhood Obesity: The biggest changes come from incremental steps not silver bullets

The easy option is for a politician to tell campaigners what they want to hear. But campaigners rarely take the blame for any failure in future delivery on headline promises. Tony Hockley, former Special Adviser in the Department of Health, discusses the reactions to the Plan for Action on Childhood Obesity whilst making the case for a focus on incremental steps, not silver bullets.

In […]

August 22nd, 2016|Economy and Society, Featured, LSE Comment, Public Services and the Welfare State, Tony Hockley, Uncategorized|0 Comments|
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The BBC must improve how it reports statistics

The BBC has a unique position in British society, with a reputation for fairness, impartiality, and usefulness. But to maintain these characteristics, journalists need to be much more careful about how they scrutinise and present statistics to the public, write Amy Hawkins and Phoebe Arnold.

How much does the UK contribute to the EU each week? How tired did you […]

August 19th, 2016|Featured, Public Services and the Welfare State|10 Comments|
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This work by British Politics and Policy at LSE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.