Bruce Stafford

Active life expectancy of older people in Mexico

Background: Social and economic development together with demographic changes and health interventions have resulted in an increase in life expectancy and a rapidly ageing population in Mexico. Whether people will live longer active and independent lives is still, however, unknown. We will address this question, providing the first estimates of active life expectancy by age, sex and local regional area in Mexico. Methods: Active life expectancy was calculated using the Sullivan method with abridged life tables. Information on the older Mexican population covered by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and the number of deaths for the same group in the year 2000 was obtained from the Office for Health Statistics and Information at IMSS in Mexico. Information on ability to perform basic activities of daily living was obtained from the National Survey on Ageing carried out in IMSS during 1998 – 99. Results: For males and females combined, active life expectancy decreased from 26.9 years at 60 years to 5.7 years at 85 years. Womens life expectancy exceeded that of men but women lived more years dependent. Similarly, older people in geographical areas with longer life expectancy spent a lower proportion of remaining life active. Conclusion: The success in increasing life expectancy above average in some groups of older people covered by IMSS has been accompanied by increments in the proportion of remaining years dependent upon others for help in basic self-care activities.

Delivering Employment Services to Vulnerable Customers: A Case Study of the UK's Employment Service

This article explores the impact of a more individualised public employment service on vulnerable people. It analyses a system Jobcentre Plus implemented in 2008, Accessing Jobcentre Plus Customer Services (AJCS), to improve customer services by minimising ‘footfall’ in local offices, encouraging the use of self-service facilities and targeting service delivery to the requirements of customers. The article shows that certain vulnerable groups, notably people with disabilities, are not necessarily well served by the new system. The article highlights tensions between managing a large and complex service and addressing the individual needs of vulnerable members of society adequately.

Supporting moves into work: New Deal for Disabled People findings

New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) is a voluntary programme designed to help people with disabilities and health conditions secure (sustainable) employment. It was delivered through a national network of public, private and voluntary sector organizations (known as Job Brokers). This paper discusses the impact of NDDP and how its relative success was enabled by the wider institutional environment. NDDP was cost-beneficial in both reducing incapacity-related benefit receipt and increasing the employment rate of programme participants. The institutional factors covered are: programme take-up, contract management and funding regime, and Job Brokers relationships with the public employment service, Jobcentre Plus.

Being more certain about Random Assignment in Social Policy Evaluations

Social experiments have been widely utilised in evaluations of social programmes in the US to identify ‘what works’, whilst in the UK their use is more controversial. This paper explores the paradigmatic, technical and practical issues evaluators confront in using randomised experiments to evaluate social policies. Possible remedies to some of these problems are outlined. It is argued that although no evaluation methodology is problem-free, policy makers and researchers should be more confident about the merits of using random assignment, provided it is used in conjunction with other methodologies more suited to understanding why and how interventions work.

Diluting substantive equality: why the UK government doesn't know if its welfare reforms promote equality

Abstract The UK Coalition government introduced a raft of welfare reforms between 2010 and 2015. As part of its response to the financial crisis, reforms were designed to cut public expenditure on social security and enhance work incentives. Policy makers are required by legislation to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different people. This Public Sector Equality Duty is an evidence-based duty which requires public authorities to assess the likely effects of policy on vulnerable groups. This chapter explores the extent to which the Department for Work and Pensions adequately assessed the equality impacts of key welfare reforms when policy was being formulated. The chapter focuses on the assessment of the impact of reductions to welfare benefits on individuals with protected characteristics – age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation – including individual and cumulative impacts. It also considers mitigating actions to offset negative impacts and how the collection of evidence on equality impacts was used when formulating policy. The chapter shows that the impacts of the reforms were only systematically assessed by age and gender, and, where data were available, by disability and ethnicity with no attempt to gauge cumulative impacts. There is also evidence of Equality Impact Assessments finding a disproportionate impact on individuals with protected characteristics where no mitigating action was taken.

Handbook of Social Policy Evaluation Editor: Bent Greve (University of Roskilde, Denmark. Email: bgr@ruc.dk) Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2017, 542 pp., £195.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-78536-323-8

union dues when the union has limited collective bargaining ability, as in some US states? The chapter on India provides survey data about teachers’ perceptions, but teachers themselves are less visible in other chapters. The volume also suffers from frustrating theoretical limitations. First, despite its stated interest in bridging political science and education literatures, there is little cited from either that would serve as pilings on which to build a bridge. In particular, literature on interest groups is largely absent. The book might benefit by borrowing insights from Elisabeth Clemens or Adam Sheingate. From education, the difficulty of “reform” has been extensively studied over the past 40 years. A reference to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik or to Tracy L. Steffes’ more recent book on early twentiethcentury American reforms would bolster the work’s theoretical traction. Second, the volume is replete with examples of federal conflicts between teachers’ unions and governments. In some countries, pushing decision making to the local level (Sweden) weakened the union, while in others (Mexico and India) it only served to strengthen unions’ political clout. This is a key theoretical concept that Paul Manna (who is cited in this book) has explored extensively. The volume would have benefited from an explicit discussion of the concept. Nevertheless, these contributions will save graduate students and advanced undergraduates hours of preliminary research work, and they will complement a fulltime scholar’s, too. The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Moe and Wiborg have found skilled scholars to send into the field. May they inspire others.

Welfare benefits and the customer: a longitudinal perspective

In the UK the Benefits Agency is seeking to process its business more efficiently, and commissioned research to investigate the number and nature of the contacts customers have with the Agency. The paper draws on this research and outlines the case for adopting a longitudinal perspective to elucidate and analyse customers’ contacts with a welfare provider. No research design is unproblematic, and the lessons learned in mapping the customers’ contacts will be discussed. In particular, the difficulties encountered and the solutions adopted in drawing a sample representative of pieces of business, in designing a contact grid, and in operationalising the notion of a contact will be elaborated. Some key findings from the research are used to illustrate the advantages of a longitudinal study.