Poverty, inequality and social mobility

This book is about money. Not about how to make money, but how to use it and use it well. A range of stimulating articles from leading international thinkers and writers forms a thought-provoking collection on how we can all use money to achieve positive social change.

Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.

This book looks at what is needed to prevent the proliferation of harm and the gradual collapse of civil society. A wide range of expert contributors outline what might help to make better societies and which mechanisms, interventions and evidence are needed when we think about a better society.

Making a committed argument for a participative, inclusive understanding of the term, Paul Spicker examines views about what poverty is and what should be done about it.

This book charts key British developments in child welfare, child poverty research and state support for children from 1800 to the present day. With direct quotations from key sources, it argues that even in the face of clear evidence of hardship the response of policy makers to child poverty has been ambivalent.

This book presents all seventeen chapters of evidence commissioned by the Acheson Inquiry to inform its work. It complements both the Acheson Inquiry report published by The Stationary Office and The widening gap (The Policy Press, 1999), which provides a broad overview and systematic interpretation of the Inequalities in Health debate.

This challenging book brings together contributions from leading poverty analysts on inequalities in income, wealth, standard of living, employment, education, housing, crime and health. It charts the extent of the growth in inequalities and offers a coherent critique of the New Labour government's policies aimed at those tackling this crisis.

'Poverty' and 'social exclusion' have become increasingly important topics on the European research agenda. This book provides an invaluable review of the available literature and presents major new thinking in terms of theory, understanding and data analysis.

Childhood poverty and social exclusion offers a rare and valuable opportunity to understand the issues and concerns that low-income children themselves identify as important. Using child-centred research methods to explore children's own accounts of their lives, this original book raises critical issues for both policy and practice.

This report presents critical new evidence on the size of the widening health gap. New geographical data are presented and displayed in striking graphical form. The widening gap should be read alongside Inequalities in health: The evidence presented to the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (The Policy Press, 1999).

Addressing the rapidly shifting politics of the minimum wage in six English-speaking countries, Shaun Wilson analyses minimum wage policies within a political-economy narrative. Topical and poignant, this book identifies the success of living wage campaigns as central to both welfare state change and alternatives to the Basic Income.

Drawing on eight countries as case studies Professor Alan France tells the story of what impact the 2007 global crisis and the great recession that followed has had on our understandings of youth.