COVID-19 Impact: 50 per cent of UK households believe they will struggle to meet their financial...
Welfare system
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25/11/2019
Benefit payments at historic low
Current benefit payments are at their lowest level since 1948, finds a new report from the IPPR. Further analysis suggest it could even be relatively lower than the Elizabethan Poor Laws.
Category: News stories -
26/06/2019
Shame, Poverty and Health Seminar
A video of the 'Shame, Poverty and Health' seminar at the University of Exeter in July is now available to watch here. The seminar explored the how poverty undermines individuals' wellbeing, confidence and dignity.
Category: Articles -
31/05/2017
The true cost of austerity
The human cost of government imposed austerity should be a key issue, argue Vickie Cooper and David Whyte. Drawing on their new book, 'The Violence of Austerity', they set out how austerity is shaping people's lives and deaths.
Category: Articles -
07/11/2014
Life on a low income in austere times
The final report from the PSE qualitative research on the reality of life on low income records how people's perpetual struggles to make meagre budgets stretch eventually this takes its toll on their lives.
Category: PSE Report -
26/11/2013
Attitudes to 'necessities of life' in Scotland
Do views in Scotland on the necessities differ from those in the rest of the UK? Is reasonable to have a single poverty standard for the whole of the UK or should Scotland have a separate standard. In this this research analysis working paper, Maria Gannon and Nick Bailey examine the PSE UK findings.
Category: Result analysis -
25/11/2013
Would an independent Scotland set a different poverty standard?
Would an independent Scotland choose a significantly different social settlement with a more generous social minimum than the rest of the UK? Drawing on the PSE UK findings into attitudes to necessities, Nick Bailey investigates.
Category: Articles -
21/11/2013
Fall in EU social protection spending
Social protection spending in the European Union fell between 2009 and 2011 – from 29.7 per cent of GDP overall to 29.1 per cent, according to data from Eurostat, the EU statistical office. But it remained significantly higher than the level in 2008 (26.8 per cent), before the full impact of the global economic recession.
Social protection expenditure includes social benefits, administration costs and other spending linked to social protection schemes.
Category: Reports -
23/09/2013
Labour plans for benefits reform
The opposition Labour Party's plans for the future of the benefits system have been clarified in two new reports. The first, by Liam Byrne (shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions), bases plans for reforming the social security system on a return to full employment. The second, published by the Labour Party to coincide with its annual conference, sets out a range of policies aimed at reforming benefits and tackling the cost of living crisis.
Category: Reports -
20/09/2013
Call for left to back benefits spending cap
Capping overall spending on social security benefits and tax credits could provide an opportunity to advance centre-left objectives for reforming 'welfare', argues a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.
The report draws on original polling data from YouGov on public attitudes towards social security and tax credit spending.Category: Reports -
09/09/2013
‘Softening’ of public attitudes on benefits
Some signs of a softening in public attitudes to benefits and the welfare state have been detected in the latest British Social Attitudes Survey report, which is published each year by the National Centre for Social Research. The annual survey shows a fall in the number of people thinking that benefit levels are too high, and a rise in those thinking that benefit cuts are doing too much harm.
At the same time a report from the Demos think tank, drawing on on the survey data, has examined the longer-term decline in support for the welfare state – particularly among the younger generation.Category: Reports
