You can tell the paleolithic right is feeling frisky when the old nonsense about lone parents starts up again. You know, the rants we used to get from Michael Portillo and others about feckless teenage girls getting themselves pregnant (amazing how they manage it by themselves, but there you go).

Of course, its all the fault of our ludicrously generous benefit system. And who wouldn’t get pregnant when there’s Income Support on offer?

There’s a prime example in today’s Metro that manages to draw the wrong conclusions from an opinion poll the Metro itself commissioned. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Social exclusion, Welfare | No Comments »

The rather brilliant theorist of economic history, Carlota Perez, argues that after very large financial crashes, economies change their mode of operation.  Systems that have been run by and in the interests of financial speculation become far more focused on the ‘real economy’.  Profits and wealth are generated less by playing around with money and more by the search for productivity and innovation in other sectors. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Politics, Transactions tax, Welfare | 1 Comment »

The number of people spending their second successive Christmas on the dole will double to over 200,000 this year.

Official statistics show the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) for more than 12 months has increased from 103,930 in December 2008 to 201,015 in November 2009, and we can see the number of long-term dole claimants continuing to rise into the new year. Read more »

   Filed under: Labour market, Social exclusion, Welfare | 1 Comment »

The Need NOT Greed coalition launched our campaign ask today calling for the government to increase the earnings disregard, the amount of money that can be earned before it is deducted from their benefits, from the current £5 to £50.

The launch received a lot of media attention including a BBC Radio 5 interview (iPlayer) with a person working cash-in-hand and not declaring it, followed by the TUC’s Nicola Smith. The Radio 5 journalist highlighted the problem with the benefits system, how the present inflexible rules were causing people to fiddle the system, leading them to take cash in hand jobs such as the qualified plumber who is struggling to survive financially on the £64.30 he receives per week from his Jobseekers’ Allowance. Read more »

   Filed under: Welfare | 2 Comments »

David Cameron’s Hugo Young Lecture is the closest any Conservative has come to explaining how they expect reactionary methods to achieve progressive ends. He fails, but the speech should not be written off and it shows that he has – at least rhetorically – broken with the Conservatives of the 1980s and 90s, who didn’t give two hoots about inequality. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Politics, Welfare | 1 Comment »

Several weeks ago we reported on a strange labour market analysis recently published by the Conservatives. Yesterday’s media suggests that they are at it again. First, they say that we have the highest levels of youth unemployment in Europe. This is accurate, but that is because we are a big country (our actual population of 15-24 year olds, according to the latest Eurostat data, is the third largest in the entire EU27). It is no great surprise to learn that the UK has more unemployed young people than Luxembourg. And on the same meaningless measure youth unemployment in the US is worse than in the entire euro area.

But if you look at a more meaningful measure – the youth unemployment rate (which shows the actual chances of someone being out of work) the UK is slightly below both the EU16 and EU27 average. Given the extent of the falls we have seen in GDP, this appears to be fairly good going. Read more »

   Filed under: Labour market, Politics, Recession, Welfare | 1 Comment »

Previous recessions show that the main danger is the build-up of long-term unemployment. Once people are long-term unemployed, they become increasingly difficult to place back into work. So the build-up of long-term unemployment makes it difficult to have a quick recovery that is not also inflationary.

One significant new policy that could make a big contribution here would be the introduction of a Job Guarantee. This would be a system of placements in temporary jobs, created and paid for by government. Read more »

   Filed under: Beyond Crisis, Labour market, Welfare | 2 Comments »

From today 68,000 lone parents are losing their entitlement to Income Support (IS). Parents whose youngest child is aged 10 or 11 will be moved onto Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) or ESA over the next few months. In 2010, the age limit will reduce down again so that by the end of the reforms, all parents whose children are seven or over will have to look for work as a condition of benefit receipt. The changes are part of Government’s wider welfare reforms and also part of the attempt to reduce child poverty by getting more lone parents into employment.

The parents affected from today are the second wave to be moved off Income Support. Over the last year, about 100,000 single parents whose youngest child was between 12 and 15 were moved onto JSA. Gingerbread has just published qualitative research with some of these parents which has produced some useful insights into parents’ experiences of the JSA regime. Read more »

   Filed under: Welfare | 1 Comment »

With 4 million households now in fuel poverty, is switching public funds from the winter fuel payment to lagging the loft the answer, as the Audit Commission argues today?

Drilling down into today’s Government report on fuel poverty, householders interviewed for the study say there are two reasons why they were unable to keep their main living room warm enough:

• COST – nearly 30% of occupiers said that cost was a reason, up 11 percentage points from 2003, showing the effect that rising energy prices have had on perceptions; but also
• POOR INSULATION – half said it was not possible to heat the room to a comfortable standard. This marks a sharp fall from over 60% last year, and is likely to be due to improvements in insulation and efficiency measures in dwellings over the last couple of years.

So home insulation is cutting into fuel poverty.

Read more »

   Filed under: Environment, Welfare | Comments Off

Earlier this week David Cameron told us that the Conservative Party was committed to to “fight for the poorest“, and that he wants every child to have the same opportunities that were afforded to him. He is concerned about the problems of “poverty, crime, addiction, failing schools, sink estates, broken homes.” And at a conference fringe Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions) reportedly informed attendees that the Conservatives would be focused on dealing with “the root causes of poverty in a rigorous ways”. What does this mean? Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Social mobility, Welfare | Comments Off