Clik here to view.
Sickness benefits, suspicion, and anxiety
In a guest post, Kayleigh Garthwaite talks about her recent research with sickness benefit claimants. Prompted by a hostile email from a GP after speaking about her research recently on national...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The positive and negative consequences of the welfare state
In a previous post, I argued that people had exaggerated the extent to which public support for the benefits system had fallen in Britain. Here, I want to look at another aspect of this that also came...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Class Inequality in Austerity Britain
In this guest post, Steven Roberts summarises his new book (co-edited with Will Atkinson and Mike Savage), ‘Class Inequality in Austerity Britain‘, and presents a vision of the political role of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Coalition, benefit cuts, and income inequality
This is a piece that first appeared in One Society‘s ‘half-term report’ on the Coalition Government and inequality (references and footnotes available in the full report). The whole (short!) edited...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The surprising truth about benefits stigma in Britain
This article was originally posted on the LSE Politics & Policy blog - it’s a co-written post by me, Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney, based on our new report on the stigma of claiming benefits that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Classes or ‘microclasses’? The nature of occupational inequality
From Bush to Bush. Miliband to Miliband. Kennedy to Kennedy. Churchill to Churchill. There’s no shortage of political dynasties either in the US or UK, where politically powerful parents beget...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The red rag of health incentives
In this guest post, Harald Schmidt from the University of Pennsylvania takes apart the media furore about a proposal (at least as reported) to cut payments to unhealthy benefit claimants if they...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Microclass mobility (and its critics)
A few weeks ago I blogged about the idea of looking at class inequality in terms of ‘microclasses’ – that is, instead of looking at ‘big class’ inequality (e.g. professionals vs. manual workers), we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is there life after work? The welfare state in a future without jobs
Peter Frase argues that liberals are wrong to focus on universal employment: “Forget job creation, we need to do more job killing. Cutting the military budget, reining in the financial sector, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
So should we bother with ‘microclasses’?
Earlier in the year I published two blog posts on ‘microclasses’ – the idea that your specific occupation is an important structuring factor for the social world, beyond its position in a broader...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Does truth matter?
If you’re reading this blog, then you’re probably interested in ‘the truth’ – by which I mean that you’re interested in the way the world really is, rather than pretending it’s the way you want it to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tax breaks for useful jobs
A new paper says that the income tax rate in socially useful jobs should be lower than in socially useless ones – here, regular guest-poster Charlotte Cavaille gives this argument a once-over, as part...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Attitudes to redistribution: does it matter where you live?
This is a guest post by Nick Bailey on some of the first work on the geography of attitudes to redistribution, based on his just-published paper (with four colleagues). More on this from me (Ben) over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Has Income Inequality Really Ballooned Since the 1970s?
One of the most influential lines of research on income inequality come from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez’s study of income tax records in the United States and elsewhere. Summarizing this work in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is ‘the paradox of redistribution’ dead?
It has all the makings of a great academic fist-fight.* In a classic 1998 article, Walter Korpi and Joakim Palme wrote a hugely influential article called ‘the paradox of redistribution,’ which argued...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Educational Inequalities in Parents’ Time with Children
In a guest post, Pablo Gracia looks at inequalities in how parents spend time with their children, using his own research on the UK and Spain – and then considers the likely causes, consequences, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brazilian protests: inequality and its consequences
In this guest post, Kênia Parsons of LSE/University of New South Wales explores the continuing, inequality-fuelled protests in her home country of Brazil. “It’s not only about cents, it’s about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Could ‘pre-distribution’ boost the wage share?
In a guest post, Stewart Lansley captures the key findings from his latest TUC pamphlet (with Howard Reed) on how to reverse the increasing share of national income going to profits rather than pay...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Did Labour’s social policies fail or succeed 1997-2010?
It’s impossible to begin telling a story without knowing the ending. So after 13 years in office (1997-2010), it is only now possible to write the story of New Labour’s social policy record – what they...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Securing the reproductive rights of learning disabled women
In this guest post, Godfred Boahen looks at an area of inequalities that we haven’t previously touched upon on the blog – reproductive rights, specifically in the case of disabled people. In February...
View Article
