Christopher Deeming

Addressing the social determinants of subjective wellbeing : the latest challenge for social policy?

The idea that the happiness and wellbeing of individuals should shape government policy has been around since the enlightenment; today such thinking has growing practical policy relevance as governments around the world survey their populations in an effort to design social policies that promote wellbeing. In this article, we consider the social determinants of subjective wellbeing in the UK and draw lessons for social policy. Survey data are taken from the ‘Measuring National Wellbeing Programme’ launched by the UKs Office for National Statistics in 2010. For the empirical strategy, we develop bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models, as well as testing for interaction effects in the data. The findings show that wellbeing is not evenly distributed within the UK. Socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, employment, household composition and tenure all matter, as does health status. Influencing population wellbeing is inherently complex, though, that said, there is a clear need to place greater emphasis on the social, given the direction of current policy.

Social investment after neoliberalism: policy paradigms and political platforms

The concept of the ‘social investment state’ refocuses attention on the productive function of social policy eclipsed for some time by the emphasis on its social protection or compensation roles. Here we distinguish between different social investment strategies, the Nordic ‘heavy’ and the Liberal ‘light’, with particular reference to the inclusive growth approach adopted in Australia. In 2007, social democrats in Australia returned to government with a clear mandate to reject the labour market deregulation and other neoliberal policies of its predecessor, and to tackle entrenched social and economic disadvantage in Australian society. For the last five years, social investment and inclusive growth has been at the centre of the Australian social policy agenda. Against this background, the article examines and critically assesses the (re)turn to ‘social investment’ thinking in Australia during Labors term in office (2007–13). Analysis focuses not just on what was actually achieved, but also on the constraining role of prevailing economic and political circumstances and on the processes that were used to drive social investment reform. In many ways, the article goes some way to exposing ongoing tensions surrounding the distinctiveness of ‘social investment’ strategies pursued by leftist parties within the (neo)liberal state.

Trials and Tribulations: The 'Use' (and 'Misuse') of Evidence in Public Policy.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly playing a central role in shaping policy for development. By comparison, social experimentation has not driven the great transformation of welfare within the developed world. This introduces a range of issues for those interested in the nature of research evidence for making policy. In this article we will seek a greater understanding of why the RCT is increasingly seen as the ‘gold standard’ for policy experiments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but not in the more advanced liberal democracies, and we will explore the implications of this. One objection to the use of RCTs, however can be cost, but implementing policies and programmes without good evidence or a good understanding of their effectiveness is unlikely to be a good use of resources either. Other issues arise. Trials are often complex to run and ethical concerns often arise in social ‘experiments’ with human subjects. However, rolling out untested policies may also be morally objectionable. This article sheds new light on the relationship between evidence and evaluation in public policy in both the global north and developing south. It also tackles emerging issues concerning the ‘use’ and ‘misuse’ of evidence and evaluation within public policy.

Social democracy and social policy in neoliberal times

This article considers the path of social policy and democracy in Australia and the latest set of welfare reforms under Labor. The reforms can be seen to mark a reaction to the excesses of neoliberal government on the one hand, but they also represent continuity in neoliberal thought and policy on the other. As we shall see, engrained ideas about individualist wage-earning welfare, that were established during the formative years of the 20th century, continue to shape, if not constrain collectivist solutions to some of the inherent social risks faced by Australian citizens today. In this light, efforts to create a welfare state geared towards meeting the needs of ‘hard-working’ Australian families appear much sharper.

Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and Wellbeing: A Multilevel Analysis

Social scientists in the comparative policy tradition have long argued that welfare systems in modern capitalist societies can be broken down into ideal types. The idea of different worlds of welfare capitalism has an enduring appeal and growing practical policy relevance as governments seek to enhance population wellbeing. In this paper, we explore the worlds of welfare theory from the perspective of happiness. Drawing on data from the World Values Survey , we examine how welfare regimes may contribute to wellbeing and we consider the significance of our findings for the development of social policy. By using multilevel models, it is possible to separate out effects due to observed and unobserved, as well as both individual-level and country-level, welfare state characteristics and we can make inferences to the distribution of social wellbeing across welfare typologies. We find that respondents living in liberal and conservative countries experience at least twice the odds of unhappiness of those living in social democracies, after controlling for individual- and country-level explanatory variables. The observed differences between the worlds of welfare were found to be highly statistically significant.

A fair deal for care in older age? Public attitudes towards the funding of long-term care

The government has made nursing care in England and Wales free, while continuing to means-test personal care. This policy contrasts with the recommendation for free personal care made by the Royal Commission on Long-term Care in 1999. This article reports on a survey of attitudes towards financing care in old age from a representative sample of men and women in England aged 25 years and over. The majority of people feel that the state should finance care for older people. The article discusses the extent to which this is consistent with the governments position and the competing notions of equity that recent debate entails.

Rethinking social policy and society

Political and administrative processes are leading to collectively undesirable and intolerable societal outcomes in the advanced liberal democracies, as policymakers seek to address social issues in the design and implementation of new social policies that actively govern conduct. Behavioural regulation is the order of the day. For scholars interested in the development of social policy and the idea of a society as a whole, it is timely to begin the revaluation of the very notion of social policy and society beyond the ‘active’ neoliberal policy paradigm. Here we are particularly concerned with the ends and means of the coercive policy instruments and the active ethical issues arising from their use.

Determining minimum standards of living and household budgets Methodological issues

In Australia, sociological research into household budgets and standards of living has long provided a firm basis for policy-makers interested in creating a more inclusive society. The budget approach is, in essence, a simple and intuitive methodology for defining minimum income standards; these include ‘poverty’ thresholds. The budget methodology provides an explicit framework for selecting personal requirements deemed necessary to maintain a particular predefined standard of living. Components are translated through prices into budgets required to purchase them. The last programme of research into household budget standards in Australia is now over a decade old and the work needs to be updated. This is due in part to people’s living standards changing over time, as do their needs. Debates about how best to set minimum social standards are once again popular among social scientists. This article reviews recent methodological developments and issues in budget standards research.

Food and Nutrition Security at Risk in Later Life: Evidence from the United Kingdom Expenditure & Food Survey

Securing adequate food and nutrition is essential for the maintenance of our health and function in society. This article examines the household characteristics associated with food and nutrition security in the United Kingdom population aged 60 years and over. Data are taken from the Expenditure and Food Survey, a continuous cross-sectional survey of household expenditure, food consumption and income. Survey data for 2002–05 provided a total sample of 5,600 households. Household food consumption is evaluated using national Dietary Reference Values recommended by the Department of Health. A multivariate logistic regression model examines the risk of being food and nutrition insecure by individual and household characteristics. The results suggest that certain sections of the older population are significantly more at risk of food insecurity than others: low-income households, the oldest-old, elderly from black and minority ethnic groups, those with a disability and men living alone. Influencing nutrition of elderly people in the home is complex and poses a major challenge to social policy. Coordinated activity at national and local levels will be required to help ensure that some of the most vulnerable members of society achieve healthy balanced diets.

Class and Cuisine in Contemporary Britain: The Social Space, the Space of Food and Their Homology

Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions – a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic foods on the other – and located their generative principles in differences of volume of capital and composition of capital respectively. Deploying a correspondence analysis of similar data using the 2010 Living Costs and Food Survey, supplemented by data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey and the 2003 Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Survey, we seek to examine whether comparable differences in expenditure and preferences are observable in contemporary Britain and, consequently, to illuminate the current structure of the food space and its homology with class. Ultimately, we conclude that Bourdieus general model is essentially transposable from 1960s France to the UK at the dawn of the 21st century, though we put additional emphasis on the ethical dimension of food consumption, and reflect on the prevalent instances of symbolic violence it underpins.