Social Security and Wage Poverty: Historical and Policy Aspects of Supplementing Wages in Britian and Beyond [Hardcover]

This is the first book to examine debates about, and the practice of, state supplementing of wages. It charts the historical development of such policies from prohibition in the 1830s and how opposition to it was overcome in the 1970s, thereby allowing the increasing supplementation of the wages of poorly paid working people.

1. Introduction
2. Wage supplements and the New Poor Law
3. Wage supplements and poor relief in the 1920s: Norfolk's agricultural labourers
4. Wage supplements and Public Assistance in the 1930s: Lancashire's cotton weavers
5. Family Allowance, the 'rediscovery of poverty' and the rejection of means-tested wage supplements
6. Family Income Supplement: reintroducing means-tested wage supplements
7. Family Credit, wage suppression and the 'think tank'
8. Tax Credits, wage worklessness and child poverty
9. Universal Credit: wage supplements and 'mini jobs'
10. Minimum and 'living' wages: alternatives to wage supplements?
11. International experiences of wage supplements: New Zealand and the USA
12. Conclusion

This is an incisive and critical examination of the supplementation of low wages through tax credits and benefits for 'the working poor'. It is a topic which has always been at the heart of social policy in all capitalist economies, not least with the explosion of low paid employment in Britain in the last two decades. Chris Grover analyses the evident contradictions with enormous clarity and skill, using lots of historical detail, including some original local history and comparisons with New Zealand and the United States. It is essential reading for anyone interested in progressive reform of the welfare state. - Norman Ginsburg, London Metropolitan University, UK
 
In this excellent book, which combines historical analysis with contemporary policy issuelS+