Inequality and the State - Softcover

Hills, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199276641 ISBN 13: 9780199276646

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005

Synopsis

Since the late 1970s, Britain has become a more unequal society. This book analyzes the dramatic widening of the income distribution, the growth of poverty, and the factors that have driven them. It examines how government spending and the taxes that pay for it affect people's incomes, why they take the forms they do, what we think of them, how things have changed since New Labour came to power in 1997, and the future pressures that any government will face as the population ages.

About this title

Review:

For all its charts and its quantitative exposition of trends in spending and income distribution - which alone would make it valuable - this is also an intensely political book, because it is about collective choice. Its central question deserves pondering by everyone concerned either to raise money from the public or to spend it. (Public)

John Hills, an LSE professor who also sits on the influential Turner commission on pensions, assembles a plethora of evidence to show that we face pressing question about how much we want the state to do to tackle poverty and social division. (The Observer)

Synopsis:

This book is about inequality, how the State affects distribution through its spending programmes and through taxation, and what the public thinks of these three issues. It describes and analyses one of the biggest social changes in Britain since the Second World War: the dramatic widening of the income distribution since the end of the 1970s, the growth of poverty, and the factors that have driven them. And it examines how government social spending and the taxes that pay for it affect this distribution, and why they take the forms they do. Each part of the discussion is set in the context of public attitudes as revealed by the rigorous and long-running British Social Attitudes survey, and of Britain's position by comparison with other countries.

Against this background, the book analyses changes in policy since New Labour came to government in 1997, discusses the impacts of these changes, and looks at the constraints and pressures on future policies, before concluding with a discussion of the dilemmas facing policy-makers as they try to meet competing aims in reducing poverty and inequality, growing demands on social spending, and the constraints and opportunities created by public attitudes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0199276641
• ISBN 13: 9780199276646
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 314