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Ending child poverty: no social worker left behind
Kristian Niemietz
31 March 2010
1 comment

Unemployment figures may still look bleak, but there is one occupational group which can be thoroughly relaxed about their future employment prospects. If Ending child poverty: mapping the route to...
How to cut Britain’s £20 billion Housing Benefit bill
Richard Wellings
15 March 2010
2 comments

The cost of Housing Benefit (HB) has exploded over the last five years, rising from £13.5 billion in 2004/05 to £20 billion in 2009/10. This is a cause for deep concern, not just...
The right and wrong form of government intervention
Peter King
24 February 2010
comments

Classical liberals, and many Conservatives, will tend to take a dim view of government intervention, but should they be equally dismissive of all government action? Take a couple of examples from...
Don’t bail out Greece
Kristian Niemietz
12 February 2010
4 comments

European leaders did their best to avoid a clear stance on Greece yesterday. But with a budget deficit of over 12% of GDP, a debt ratio of almost 120% of GDP, an electorate fiercely opposed to the...
Zero consistency in “Zero Poverty” campaign
Kristian Niemietz
8 February 2010
5 comments

“Today we invite you to come with us on a special journey; to open your eyes and look at poverty. Open your ears and listen to the voices of poor people! Open your heart and meet people! Open...
Means testing means more welfare dependency
Patricia Morgan
5 February 2010
1 comment

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne leads the chorus of tut-tutting at means-tested child tax credits going to “better-off” families and seems to believe that we would save enough to bail...
Two-thirds of a cheer for “Save the Children”
Kristian Niemietz
1 February 2010
4 comments

Save the Children has recently been quoted regarding their findings on “severe child poverty”, which is rising. Indeed, it was increasing before the recession and, according to the...
The Delusion Society
Kristian Niemietz
18 January 2010
4 comments

How to pursue a redistributionist agenda when public support for it is low? Change public attitudes by restructuring the welfare regime, says a new book titled The Solidarity Society by the Fabian...
Better work incentives are the key to reducing child poverty
Kristian Niemietz
16 December 2009
7 comments

The UK still has a higher proportion of children living in workless households than any other member state of the EU-27. This is the result of an unfortunate combination of two circumstances: first...
Two concepts of poverty, two approaches to tackle it
Kristian Niemietz
27 November 2009
6 comments

Kate Green, the Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, recently responded to an IEA blog piece in which I examined a CPAG article by Polly Toynbee. I had argued that the article was not...
Politicised poverty research misses the point
Kristian Niemietz
23 November 2009
35 comments

It is a bit tricky to criticise an organisation that describes itself as “the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK”. But when a charity enters the...
Raising the pension age by easier stages could minimise political hostility
Len Shackleton
6 November 2009
14 comments

It is widely agreed that state pension age (SPA) needs to rise to reflect the financial downside of the happy prospect of greater life expectancy. The current government is committed to this, albeit...
Against child poverty – and against the child poverty bill
Kristian Niemietz
2 November 2009
6 comments

Policy Exchange has just released a report aptly titled Poverty of Ambition, which criticises the major parties’ approach to child poverty. It explains why our conventional poverty measures...
End of entitlement – for the middle classes…
Philip Booth
22 October 2009
comments

Reform have today launched a report calling for the end of middle class benefits to stave off increases in tax. Before querying that proposal, let me say first that I am glad that they have waded...
Incapacity Benefit: minor tinkering will not end a sick system
Philip Booth
6 October 2009
comments

The Conservatives are proposing to clamp down on incapacity benefit claimants in order to deal with the large numbers they say should be in work. This is a laudable aim, of course, but it is highly...
How entrepreneurship reduces relative poverty
Kristian Niemietz
9 September 2009
10 comments

Professor Christoph Butterwegge, a political scientist and poverty researcher at the University of Cologne, seems to be angry with his fellow citizens. What is bothering him is that...
Poverty in Britain, past and present
Kristian Niemietz
2 September 2009
4 comments

In A History of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr describes post-war Britain as a grim place in material terms. In 1950, only 4% of the adult population owned a television, and only 3% went on holidays...
The entitlement to be selfish
Peter King
17 August 2009
4 comments

Gordon Brown recently signalled a shift in public policy away from performance targets and towards entitlements. He argued we should place access to health, education, housing and welfare on the...
What’s wrong with falling house prices?
Peter King
6 August 2009
2 comments

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) announced today that they had changed their forecast on house prices for 2009, and that instead of a fall they now foresee a...
The benefit labyrinth: a cornerstone of the poverty trap
Kristian Niemietz
5 August 2009
72 comments

Allister Heath once labelled Gordon Brown “a man who seems to love making simple things as complicated as possible”. A recent analysis of the benefit system by the Centre for Policy...

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