Paul Johnson

Old age from Antiquity to post-modernity

Based on themes such as status and welfare, Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity examines the role of the elderly in history. This empirical study represents a substantial contribution to both the historical understanding of old age in past societies as well as the discussion of the contribution of post-modernism to historical scholarship.

British welfare policy : workhouse to workfare

This study is designed to fill the gap between histories of welfare policies, which normally take the story only as far as the emergence of the welfare state in the 1940s, and discussions of social policy, which are typically concerned only with current issues and very recent changes. It thus aims to place contemporary policies in their full historical perspective from the 1830s to the 1980s. The text demonstrates the recurrence of dilemmas posed by such issues as eligibility for relief, selectivity versus universality, or the role of means testing. Similarly, it suggests that there is a long term continuity in the social inequality sustained by certain other forms of benefit, such as occupational pensions, and the incidence of tax reliefs on insurance premiums or mortgage interest. The extent to which apparently modern initiatives have been shaped by earlier policies is emphasized in the books analysis of the changing boundary between provision of public welfare and private alternatives in the form of charity, informal care or voluntary services.

Twentieth-century Britain : economic, social, and cultural change

*Introduction: Britain *Britain in the world economy *Regions and industries in Britain *Edwardian Britain: Empire, Income and Political discontent *Poverty and Social Reforms *The Social, Economic and Political status of women *Sport and recreation *Nationality and Ethnicity *The First World War and its aftermath *The Onset of Depression *Recovery from Depression *Unemployment and the Dole in war Britain *Attitudes to War *The New Consumerism *Cinema and Broadcasting *The War economy *Austerity and Boom *The Golden Age, 1955-1973 *Crisis and turn around? 1973-1993 *Postwar welfare *Education and Social Mobility *Women since 1945 *Immigration and Race relations in Postwar Britain *Religion and Secularization *Pressure groups and popular Campaigns *Youth Culture *The Role of the State in Twentieth Century Britain.

Intergenerational Transfers and Public Expenditure on the Elderly in Modern Britain

Recent research in the United States and New Zealand has suggested that over the last two decades the age profile of well-being has shifted against children and in favor of the elderly population. This shift has occurred because welfare systems have become increasingly generous towards older people and increasingly restrictive towards families with dependent children. This paper considers whether similar trends can be identified for Britain. We examine measures of the age profile of poverty and of changes in the incomes of older people, but find they produce ambiguous results which do not address directly the issue of the intergenerational impact of the British welfare state. Direct measures of government expenditure on cash benefits to the retired population and on health and personal social service expenditure by age-group show that the British welfare system has been neutral between age-groups in recent years.

The measurement of social security convergence: the case of European public pension systems since 1950

This article proposes a novel way of measuring cross-national changes over time in the outputs of social security systems. Traditional approaches to the comparative analysis of social security systems use expenditure levels, regime types or poverty and inequality rates to rank countries and map change over time. All these approaches encounter the problem of determining how much of the observed change is due to internal developments within the social security system, and how much due to exogenous social and economic factors. Taking the example of public pensions in five European countries since 1950, this article demonstrates how formal social security rules can be used in a simulation model to evaluate changes in public pension payments for a variety of hypothetical individuals characterised by different levels of lifetime income. This procedure produces direct measures of the impact of changes in social security systems which are entirely independent of exogenous developments in social and economic structures. This new method reveals the ‘pure’ effect of internal social security system development over time.

The Labour Force Participation of Older Men in Britain, 1951-81

This paper evaluates the relative impact of a range of health, economic and structural factors on the employment experience of older male workers in Britain in the 30 years since 1951. It is based on a cross-sectional analysis of data on age of workforce in 34 industrial sectors drawn from the decennial censuses from 1951 to 1981. It finds that early retirement is influenced primarily by economic factors, although health becomes important in 1981. Retirement at age 65 appears to be conditioned by structural factors, particularly the way in which exit from the labour force at age 65 is managed by employers and trade unions. By showing that retirement and early retirement behaviour are influenced by different factors, and that the importance of these factors has changed over time, this paper demonstrates why earlier research focusing on monocausal explanations has been unable to generate robust results.

Some Historical Dimensions of the Welfare State ‘Crisis’ *

Arguments about the harmful effects of government intervention in welfare issues, which seemed peripheral to the rapid expansion of state welfare in the twentieth century, have recently achieved the status of a new orthodoxy. This article examines the historical development of economic, administrative and ideological criticisms of state welfare in Britain and America, in order to identify the roots of this new orthodoxy. It finds that economic and administrative criticisms are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the rise of this new view, which ultimately rests on specific ideological beliefs about the propriety of state welfare.

Did They Jump or Were They Pushed? The Exit of Older Men from the London Labor Market, 1929-1931

We examine the income of older men in London around 1930, based on a large sample. The income of nonworking older men was substantially below that of men still working. We find no evidence that retirement rates increased at the state-penionable—unsurprisingly, since pension paryments provided less than a povertyline income. Less demanding or part-time work was unavailable. Hence we conclude that the decision of older manual workers to leave the labor market was determined primarily by the absence of appropriate employment opportunities, rather than the presence of substantial assets or nonlabor income.

Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt and Company Winding-Up in Nineteenth-Century England.

This is the first legal and financial history of bankruptcy in nineteenth-century England. V. Markham Lester offers a full statistical analysis and detailed account of bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt, and company winding-up, and traces the decline in the level of insolvency towards the end of the century. His scholarly and detailed analysis demonstrates the validity of the Victorians notion that financial failure was a significant problem for English society. Dr Lester shows that random factors may have played as great a role as cyclical fluctuations in bankruptcy levels. Victorian Insolvency also adds a new and significant dimension to the debate on government growth by analysing for the first time the part the English legal system played in the growth of British government. By the end of the nineteenth century, the administration of bankrupt estates was one of the largest items of government expenditure. Dr Lester sets Victorian management of insolvency in the context of other nineteenth-century legal and financial reforms and assesses its role in the development of the modern British state.

Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914.

Book synopsis: This book presents an important new perspective on Jews in England - and English attitudes towards them - during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a period of fundamental change. At the accession of Queen Victoria, Jews in England were a small and disadvantaged minority, numbering no more than 30,000 and excluded from parliament. By the early twentieth century, political and legal disabilities had been almost completely abolished, the Jewish population grown tenfold, and mass immigration from eastern Europe had changed the face of Anglo-Jewry. In exploring these fundamental changes David Feldman investigates the reality of Jewish integration more rigorously than any previous study, and addresses the central questions arising from the Jewish presence in England. To what extent did English society accept or reject the Jewish minority within it? How did the Jews religious, communal and political identities develop in the English context? What was the impact of immigration, and how did the immigrants fare within the English economy? Englishmen and Jews draws on a wide range of source materials in both English and Yiddish. Its chapters span political, religious, economic and social history. It deals with arguments between Whigs and Tories over Jewish emancipation and with the turbulent political life of the Jewish East End of London, with anti-semitic assaults on Disraeli and with the travails of the immigrant sweatshop workers. Above all, it reshapes our understanding of the connections between English and Jewish history during this period. By seeing each in the context provided by the other it enables us to see both in new ways, and adds strikingly to the debates on national identity and liberalism, and on class and community in pre-1914 English society. Ambitious and highly sophisticated ...A great achievement providing a well-researched and analytically sharp account. Tony Kushner, History Today A stimulating and innovative study ...Ambitious in scope and range of concerns. Thomas Linehan, Jewish Quarterly Feldman makes a heroically fair-minded effort to understand opponents of emancipation and unrestricted immigration on their own terms ...On the whole, it is a happy story that he has to tell. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph Dr. David Feldman is a member of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, the University of London.