We have a long history of publishing in the area of social justice and are committed to progressive social change. Since our inception 25 years ago, we have built a reputation for publishing scholarship that focuses on improving individual lives and that reaches beyond academia to government, professionals and the wider public to inform policy and practice.
Key to our publishing in this area is the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, an internationally unique forum for leading research on the themes of poverty and social justice, the SSSP Agendas for Social Justice series, and the Key Issues in Social Justice series.
Social Justice and Human Rights
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Menstrual poverty has become a global issue, affecting women who do not have access to the menstrual products they need. Most of the related literature is based on low- and middle-income countries’ facts and experiences. Using the 2020 Youth Survey in Barcelona, this cross-sectional study provides novel data on the prevalence and the factors associated with menstrual poverty in an urban context (Barcelona) in a high-income country (Spain) with a randomly selected representative sample of 700 young women aged 15 to 34. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression models were used in the analysis. Results show that 15.3 per cent of young women in Barcelona reported facing financial barriers to accessing menstrual products. Further, those young women with a high level of material deprivation (OR=4.42; CI=2.14–9.16) have a greater probability of suffering from menstrual poverty, whereas those living independently from their parents (OR=0.50; CI=0.28–0.90) and women with a non-EU origin (Latin-Americans: OR=0.54; CI=0.31–0.93; Others: OR=0.06; CI=0.01–0.46) have a lower probability of reporting menstrual poverty. Our findings advocate that the measurement of poverty should consider individual aspects and needs, and not only the household income level as the reference. Further, we would encourage rethinking poverty measurement with a gender perspective, as well as identifying how deprivations overlap to aggravate the experience of poverty.
Critics of Universal Basic Income (UBI) have claimed that it would be either unaffordable or inadequate. This discussion paper tests this claim by examining the distributional impacts of three UBI schemes broadly designed to provide pathways to attainment of the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). We use microsimulation of data from the Family Resources Survey to outline the static distributional impacts and costs of the schemes. Our key finding is that even the fiscally neutral starter scheme would reduce child poverty to the lowest level achieved since 1961 and achieve more than the anti-poverty interventions of the New Labour Governments from 2000. The more generous schemes would make further inroads into the UK’s high levels of poverty and inequality, but at greater cost. We conclude by assessing fiscal strategies to reduce the up-front deficit of higher schemes, providing a more positive assessment of affordability and impact than critics have assumed.
This article aims at contributing to the current literature on poverty data limitations and measurement by discussing the process for producing the first multidimensional poverty measure based on the consensual approach for the City of Buenos Aires. The results show a remarkable level of consensus about the necessities of life in the twenty-first century, underline the importance of generating more suitable indicators of deprivation and show that unmet basic needs-type variables are no longer adequate for measuring poverty in countries like Argentina. According to the valid and reliable poverty index, 20.3% of the city’s population live in households in multidimensionally poor households, this being the social dimension that shows the highest deprivation rate.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, food insecurity was rising steadily and attracting growing concern across the UK. Young people are disproportionately more exposed to food insecurity because of their higher risks of poverty, destitution and homelessness, and because of discriminations in the labour market and social security system. Despite this, very little is known about youth food insecurity in the UK, where the assumption that young people can rely on parental support prevails. This article draws on qualitative interviews with 13 young people, aged 18–26, conducted during the height of nationwide lockdowns in Edinburgh and London in 2020. By engaging with young people from a range of circumstances, this article provides important insights into experiences of youth food insecurity. It finds that while youth food insecurity stems from the familiar trigger of low income, young people are not only more exposed to this risk, but also encounter additional risks linked to being young, including leaving home for the first time. Similarly, this article illustrates that while people of all ages generally prefer to manage their food insecurity independently due to the stigma attached to food insecurity, notions of independence seem particularly important to the young people and their narratives of emerging adulthood in this study, with implications for their (dis)engagement with support. The findings challenge ingrained policy assumptions about young people, and suggest a need for significant policy activity around youth food insecurity, which has been troublingly overlooked in the UK.
This book focuses on the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic currently dominating the agenda of global, national and local policymakers, from the perspective of the UK. This major public health crisis presents a threat which is impacting adversely on global economic structures, and exacerbating a number of pre-existing wicked issues. These interlinked issues include climate change, racial justice, austerity, housing and homelessness, employment, domestic abuse, human trafficking and modern slavery.
The Centre for Partnering is a collaboration of universities: University of Stirling, University of Northumbria (Newcastle Business School), Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford University (Blavatnik School of Government) and the University of Cardiff. Recently, the Centre for Partnering has been joined by ‘fuse’, involving the universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside, with a focus on public health.
The Centre for Partnering has established its own governance framework with an aim of delivering more effective partnering outcomes through the application of relationalism. In particular, this involves the identification of a number of relational dividends covering the functional, financial, social and emotional values that can arise.
Through the Centre for Partnering’s governance arrangements and the workings of its Discussion Groups/Forums a knowledge base has been compiled which will form part of the Centre for Partnering’s accreditation model.
Central England Co-operative is one of the largest independent co-operative retailers in the UK, with gross sales of more than £1 billion, over 400 trading outlets, a family of around 8,600 colleagues and more than 330,000 regular trading members.
COVID-19 uncovered how fragile New Zealand’s public and community services are for many people. While the health system has so far avoided the worst impacts because of initial success in containing the disease, income, food, education, employment and housing and community support systems have been strained and inequalities amplified. For decades public health has had community health and empowerment at its theoretical core but in New Zealand, our health systems have failed to reach effectively into communities. This failing is replicated throughout the government sector where a highly centralised polity has little experience or tradition of working with communities.
The New Zealand health system is currently undergoing significant reform providing an opportune moment to revisit our social infrastructure and consider options for more effective action to achieve health and wellbeing for all. There is good reason why local government could be a central actor in any transformation to more empowered and resilient communities. But learning from the experiences of other countries while ensuring we also learn from our own context and innovations will be key. Wellbeing needs to be embedded throughout the system. The pandemic has served as a wake-up call and conversations have begun. This chapter explores this potential rethink of relationships in New Zealand between central and local government, and communities.
