Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article is concerned with questions about the amount of support given by welfare states towards the maintenance of a wife engaged in housework and child care. It compares the value of the support supplied by the tax/benefit packages of 15 countries. The article defines support for wifely labour as the difference between the net disposable income of a single person and a couple with the same earnings. In analysing the data, three models are used: the "traditional" model where the wife is economically dependent on her husband; the "modern" model where the wife remains outside the labour market while she has young children; and the "dual breadwinner" model where the mother of young children is in full‐ or part‐time employment. Much of the analysis is concerned with patterns of social policy in which support for wives is associated with support for children. While the evidence shows that welfare states do provide support to wives, both with and without young children and engaged in paid as well as unpaid work, the levels of support vary greatly between welfare states. The variations are not associated with the generally discussed categorizations of welfare state types.

Abstract: The B.B.C. is facing a fiscal crisis ‐ its revenue will no longer increase without further rises in the licence fee. The government is reluctant to raise the licence fee for political reasons and because of anxiety over its impact on low income households. There is evidence of growing resistance towards paving the licence fee. One of the major reasons suggested for non‐payment is that poor households simply cannot afford to pay the lump sum required.The Peacock Committee are considering other methods of raising revenue for the B.B.C. The Public Accounts Committee have called for more efficient detection methods and higher penalties. But these solutions will cost money and hurt poor households most. One way of avoiding prosecuting poor evaders and ensuring that the licence is paid, is to introduce a system of licence‐direct similar to that pioneered by the fuel boards.

Data on families with very severely handicapped children are subjected to multivariate analysis in an attempt to examine whether decisions on claims for the attendance allowance are made equitably. The disability and handicap of the child as well as some socio-demographic characteristics of the families are considered. Reservations are made about the measures and techniques used in the analysis but some inconsistencies in decision making are noted.

SummaryRoutinely collected data on the 37,094 families with severely handicapped children who have applied to the Family Fund are used to examine the relationship between certain handicapping disorders and the year of birth, season of birth, birth order, region of domicile, social class, sex and presence of a disabled sibling. Differences between each handicapping disorder, and differences between the handicapping disorders and the general population are noted.

Income and expenditure measures are commonly used to establish poverty lines representing, respectively, the availability of cash resources and the standard of living approaches to measuring the extent and composition of poverty. Using UK data we compare these two measures and show how they might be combined. Although overall poverty rates are similar whichever measure is used, the relativities they imply for different types of household differ considerably. There is little overlap between income and expenditure poverty and very few households are both income–and expenditure–poor. The concept of poverty as constraint on choice or constrained expenditure is then defined as the absence of spending on durable goods and luxury items. Using logistic regression, income thresh–olds associated with the observed levels of constrained expenditure are derived for different types of household. Assuming all income is spent, these thresholds define a poverty line below which expenditure is severely constrained. The extent to which social assistance rates limit or prevent household expenditure is also estimated. The method and the estimates illustrate the value of exploring the links between income and expenditure in the measurement of poverty, drawing attention to the limitations of the data, and identifying future research needs.

European Union (EU) indicators on poverty and social exclusion employ only two child breakdowns: the proportion of children living in households with incomes below 60% of the national median using the modified OECD equivalence scale and the proportion of children living in workless households. The UK also uses these indicators in the Opportunities for All series. This article first develops a new indicator of child poverty based on income, subjective and deprivation indicators which may be more reliable than income alone. It then explores the extent to which income poverty and worklessness represent international variation in child well‐being using an index that we have developed. The conclusions are that: (1) relative income poverty and worklessness are poor indicators of child well‐being, especially for some of the new EU countries; (2) deprivation has a stronger association with overall well‐being than relative income poverty or worklessness; (3) there are a number of other single indicators of child well‐being that could be used as proxies for overall child well‐being; and (4) The EU (and the UK) could easily develop its own index of child well‐being.