Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter argues that the EU has reached a point in its development when a giant step can be taken to bring aid to developing countries. In December 2001, the EU adopted a set of commonly agreed and defined indicators for social inclusion. These indicators covered financial poverty and its persistence, income inequality, low educational attainment, premature mortality, and poor housing. They would also help to monitor action plans and judge progress towards Social Europe. The chapter argues that this is an ideal time for the EU to take a major step on behalf of the poorest countries outside of it. A justifiable and affordable target could be agreed of providing official development assistance equal to 1 per cent of Gross National Product (GNP). This would help to meet the millennium development goals agreed at the World Summit in September 2000.
This book offers insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from scholars in the field, both internationally and in the UK, it asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. The book concludes that they are not, and that a radically different international strategy is needed. The book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes, and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed, including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels – international, regional, national, and sub-national – ranging from the policies of international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, through to national governments, groups of governments, and local and city authorities, are examined. Key aspects of social policy, such as ‘targeting’ and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail.
This book offers insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from scholars in the field, both internationally and in the UK, it asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. The book concludes that they are not, and that a radically different international strategy is needed. The book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes, and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed, including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels – international, regional, national, and sub-national – ranging from the policies of international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, through to national governments, groups of governments, and local and city authorities, are examined. Key aspects of social policy, such as ‘targeting’ and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail.
This chapter raises direct questions about alternative strategies and policies, and calls for substantial action to meet the millennium development objectives. It argues that some of the global norms, and facts and findings on poverty, have led to two incorrect conclusions: that good progress is being made in reducing world poverty; and that aggregate growth is the best way for reducing it further. The chapter questions whether $1 per day is a valid gauge for monitoring global poverty, whether poverty statistics for China are unduly biasing global poverty trends, whether much of the debate on global poverty illustrates the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, whether equity is good for the poor, and whether there is a role for social policy. It concludes that equity matters for poverty reduction, based on the argument that growth is good for the poor.
This chapter summarises the various strands of this book’s argument for a change of international policy direction if there is to be any realistic prospect of fulfilling the UN millennium development goals – to bring about a dramatic decline in the numbers in poverty. The evidence shows that a balance has to be struck between private and public sectors so that corporations accept clear social as well as market objectives, authorised by the major states acting together and the precepts of reformed international company law. The needs of the poor outside market activity will be better recognised and compensated, and public provision of a minimum adequate income and universal basic social services will be accepted. The chapter concludes that consequential steps to strengthen social insurance and other forms of guaranteed rights to an adequate income, and to strengthen different forms of redistributive aid within and between states, should be taken.
This chapter explains what anti-poverty policies have been developed in Europe. It describes minimum incomes, access to the labour market, and access to social services. The chapter also describes the first, second, and third European anti-poverty programmes from 1975 to 1994. The intentions of the anti-poverty programmes were to stimulate political debate in the member countries, exchange information and experience of different policies, monitor poverty, and coordinate activities in the different countries to combat poverty. Income poverty remained the dominant feature of the conditions investigated. Meanwhile, social exclusion was best understood as a denial of basic rights or social citizenship. Modern conditions seemed to have reduced the effectiveness of social-security systems. There is a gap between the principles of equity or justice and the actual implementation of an administrative system of benefit.
This book offers insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from scholars in the field, both internationally and in the UK, it asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. The book concludes that they are not, and that a radically different international strategy is needed. The book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes, and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed, including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels – international, regional, national, and sub-national – ranging from the policies of international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, through to national governments, groups of governments, and local and city authorities, are examined. Key aspects of social policy, such as ‘targeting’ and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail.
This chapter describes the scope of the book. Three types of institutions (the richest governments, international agencies, and largest corporations) are prime instigators or sponsors of the policies that deepen, perpetuate, or aim to reduce existing poverty and inequality. The idea of these three ‘transforming’ the debate about poverty applies to the arguments they have put forward to reduce organised state welfare, progressive taxation, and employment rights, and to actively support privatisation. The scope of the book is international, and its focus is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes, and measurement of poverty. It is divided into four parts: international anti-poverty policies: the problems of the Washington Consensus; anti-poverty policies in rich countries; anti-poverty policies in poor countries; and future anti-poverty policies, both in national and international context.
This chapter examines the influential role of the World Bank over the last 50 years in shaping approaches to poverty, and concludes that a major problem has been its avoidance of the obligation to adopt a core scientific measure of the phenomenon to facilitate comparison and the identification of the population groups who experience poverty in the worst forms. Another, related, problem has been avoidance of the obligation, accepted at the 1995 Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development, to monitor existing and newly introduced policies and measure their exact effects on the extent and severity of poverty. This applies to the components of the Bank’s anti-poverty policies during recent decades. Structural action by the key institutional players – the transnational corporations and the governments of the most powerful nations, such as the G8 – working collaboratively as well as within existing and newly introduced international law, is an unknown factor.
This book offers insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from scholars in the field, both internationally and in the UK, it asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. The book concludes that they are not, and that a radically different international strategy is needed. The book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes, and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed, including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels – international, regional, national, and sub-national – ranging from the policies of international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, through to national governments, groups of governments, and local and city authorities, are examined. Key aspects of social policy, such as ‘targeting’ and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail.
