Poverty, inequality and social mobility

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 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.

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.

'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.

A century ago, Seebohm Rowntree embarked on an investigation of poverty in York. The study was hugely influential in the thinking which led to the foundation of the welfare state and his research methods still have validity today. This classic work is republished in a special centenary edition with an extended Preface by Jonathan Bradshaw.

Offering insight into the key debates on services for young children, this book tells how Sure Start was set up, the numerous changes it went through, and how it has changed the landscape of services for all young children in England.

This major new book provides, for the first time, a detailed evaluation of policies on poverty and social exclusion since 1997, and their effects. Bringing together leading experts in the field, it considers the challenges the government has faced, the policies chosen and the targets set in order to assess results.

An important contribution to topical debates about social work education and the identity of the profession, drawing lessons from the recent history of social work to identify how and why it has lost its privilege and influence.

Geoff Payne considers a wide range of dimensions of mobility and life chances to assess the causes and consequences of mobility as social and political processes and challenges well-established opinions of politicians, pressure groups, the press, academics and the public.

Poverty Propaganda debunks many popular myths and misconceptions about poverty and its prevalence, causes and consequences. In particular, it highlights the role of ‘poverty propaganda’ in sustaining class divides in perpetuating poverty and disadvantage in contemporary Britain.

Christopher Deeming and Paul Smyth, together with internationally renowned contributors, illustrate how the merging of ‘social investment’ and ‘inclusive growth and development’ agendas, together with the environmental imperative of ‘sustainability’, is forging an important new social policy framework and shaping a new global development agenda.