Poverty, Work & Justice

Issues relating to work, poverty and social justice dominate policy agendas across Europe, as the repercussions from the financial crisis continue to be felt in depressed national economies.

Problems of unemployment – especially amongst young people – and poverty are of huge concern. On top of these highly topical issues there are also longer-standing debates around inequality, gender, family structure, work-life balance, the ageing workforce and social mobility, which dominate the political discourse.

The Poverty, Work & Justice Group draws on the strengths of several departments – Social & Policy Sciences, Economics, Education, Health, and PoLIS (Politics, Languages and International Studies), as well as the School of Management. A variety of paradigms, theoretical perspectives and empirical methodologies are drawn on as we seek to improve the relevant evidence bases that can speak to these important policy areas.

The Group aims to build research collaborations embracing researchers within the University, at other institutions and with non-academic partners.

Policy briefs

Research summaries

Videos

Publications

Education, Meritocracy and Redistribution (Souto-Otero, 2010)
Working Lone-Mother Families and their Children (Millar, Ridge, 2011)
Work Now, Pay Later? An empirical analysis of the pension–pay trade off (Sessions, 2013)
The Fall of Work Stress and the Rise of Wellbeing (Wainwright, 2011)
The Transmission of Women's Fertility, Human Capital, and Work Orientation Across Immigrant Generations (Papps, 2013)
Extending Working Life: behaviour change interventions (Weyman, Wainwright, Jones, 2012)
Living with Poverty: a review of the literature on children’s and families’ experiences of poverty (Ridge, 2009)
Following Families: working lone-mother families and their children (Ridge, Millar, 2011)
The United Kingdom: the feminization of poverty? (Millar, 2010)
What a Drag: the chilling impact of unemployment on real wages (Gregg, 2012)
Gender-Class Equality in Political Economies (Prince Cooke, 2011)
"Families" in International Context (Prince Cooke, 2010)
Within School and Beyond the Gate: the complexities of being educationally successful and working class (Ingram, 2011)
Reconstructing the Self and Social Identity: new interventions for returning long-term Incapacity Benefit claimants to work (Wainwright, 2011)
Investigating the Effect of Collective Organizational Commitment on Unit-Level Performance and Absence (Briner, 2012)
Wives' Part-Time Employment and Marital Stability in Great Britain, West Germany and the United States (Prince Cooke, 2010)
The Causal Effect of Education on Wages Revisited (Dickson, 2012)
Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: the impact of increased inequality (Gregg, 2012)
The Labour Market in Winter: state of working Britain (Gregg, 2012)Creditworthy: assessing the impact of tax credits in the last decade and considering what this means for Universal Credit (Gregg, 2012)
The Employment Effects of Recession on Couples in the UK: women's and household employment prospects and partners’ job loss (Harkness, 2011)
The Impact of the Tax and Benefit System on Second Earners (Harkness, 2010)
Welfare Reform and Lone Parents in the UK (Harkness, 2009)
Towards a European Labour Market? Trade Unions and Flexicurity in France and Britain (Milner, 2012)
The Value and Risk of Defined Contribution Pension Schemes: international evidence (Tonks, 2012)
The Crime Reducing Effect of Education (Vujic, 2011)

Forthcoming

Lone Mothers and Paid Work: the ‘family-work project’ (Millar, Ridge, 2013)