Documents Stewart, Kitty 5 results

"The European Council recently adopted a list of target indicators for EU member states in the fields of poverty and social exclusion, with likely implications for social policies across Europe. The targets chosen are largely national average figures. This paper argues that if regional disparities are to be taken seriously, all key indicators should instead be measured at regional as well as at national level. Using a variety of data sources, it examines regional indicators of poverty, unemployment, education and health, and shows, first, that the degree of dispersion depends on the indicator under scrutiny; and second, that it is not always the same regions within each country which do best and worst in each case. It follows that a single dispersion measure will only be misleading, while the choice of disparity in regional unemployment rates in particular has additional problems which are also discussed. Finally, the paper draws attention to the limits of currently available data at regional level, in light of the fact that one key aspect of the Lisbon 2000 European Council summit conclusions was a commitment to the collection of better data on poverty and social exclusion in the EU."

"Economic collapse in the former communist bloc saw the erosion of financial support and services for young children. Since 1998 even the poorer countries of the bloc have seen a return to economic growth. But have the benefits been felt by children? Drawing on administrative and household survey data, this article examines three aspects of government support for young children — maternity benefit, child allowances and preschool provision — in four countries in different parts of the region: Bulgaria, Albania, Moldova and Tajikistan. The article concludes that these services remain vastly inadequate. In some countries child allowances are well targeted towards poorer households, but are too small in size to have an impact. Preschool overwhelmingly benefits urban families and the better-off, while paid maternity leave is increasingly rare. Given what is known about the long-term impact of both early education and early childhood poverty, the findings are of considerable concern."

"While social policy falls predominantly under national rather than European Union (EU) jurisdiction, there are nonetheless multiple ways in which social policy and social outcomes in EU member states have been affected by EU membership. This paper draws on existing evidence and analysis to review the consequences for UK social policy of the decision to leave the EU. We focus predominantly on the implications of the British government's pledge to ‘take back control' of money, borders and laws. Our conclusion is that Brexit is likely to have negative effects on the quality of public services and, for some groups in particular, social rights, and that these effects are likely to be greater the more distant are the future trading and wider relationships between the UK and the EU27."

"In this paper, we examine the mental health effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a household with no-one in full-time employment can receive in social security. We treat the reduction in the cap as a natural policy experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not, and examining the risk of experiencing poor mental health both before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing on data from ~900,000 individuals, we find that the prevalence of depression or anxiety among those at risk of being capped increased by 2.6 percentage points (95% confidence interval: 1.33–3.88) compared with those at a low risk of being capped. Capping social security may increase the risk of mental ill health and could have the unintended consequence of pushing out-of-work people even further away from the labour market."