Mike Brewer () (Institute for Fiscal Studies) Tom Clark (Institute for Fiscal Studies) Matthew Wakefield () (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London)
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The current Labour Government was elected in 1997 with few specific social security proposals. This paper argues that after five years, consistent trends in social security policy have emerged: there is a willingness to increase benefits; a “work-first” focus; increasing centrality for benefits that relate to ‘need’, which has involved expanded means-testing; a downgrading of contributory benefits; and, a desire to reduce poverty by redistributing to particular demographic groups. Many of these characteristics of Labour policy, such as the size of caseloads or aggregate expenditure, are yet to show up in various aggregate data, and we argue that this is probably due to various counter-balancing socio-economic changes since 1997. Looking forward, we discuss what the introduction of new forms of means-test might achieve. We also suggest that it might be considered odd that Labour has left Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit unreformed, especially since a good chance to reform them without significant cost or low-income losers, has been missed.
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Paper provided by Institute for Fiscal Studies in its series IFS Working Papers with number
W02/12.
Length: 53 pp Date of creation: Jun 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:02/12
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
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Susan Himmelweit & Barbara Bergmann & Kate Green & Randy Albelda & the Women's Committee of One Hundred & Charlotte Koren, 2004.
"Lone Mothers: What is to be done?,"
Feminist Economics,
Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 237-264, July.
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