It has been argued that council house sales will contribute towards a more general process of residualization of public sector housing. Empirical evidence is presented in this context derived from surveys of purchasers and non-purchasers of council dwellings in the city of Aberdeen. This evidence confirms that purchasers and non-purchasers exhibit different socio-economic characteristics and after only four years of the Right to Buy legislation significant numbers of households in social classes I, II and III have left the public sector via the mechanism of sales. The small number of sales relative to the stock as a whole, however, has meant that the overall contribution of sales towards residualization has been small. This evidence from Aberdeen is compared to evidence from elsewhere and related to the varying pattern of sales across the country as a whole.

This paper examines the extent to which low household income influences access to primary health care in both the US and the UK. The basic approach is to ask whether, given data about a person's age, sex, and self-reported general health status and history, extra information about whether or not they come from a low-income household adds a statistically significant amount to the probability of their obtaining various amounts of primary medical care. The measure of primary medical care is derived from the number of physician visits and it, along with the other data, is drawn from the 1977 US National Medical Care Expenditure Survey and the 1980 UK General Household Survey. Although the two surveys cover different sample periods, they are similar enough to make comparisons between the two countries possible. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that low household income is not an important determinant of the actual use of primary health care resources. Only with subgroups of the low-income population (UK women and US relatively unhealthy individuals) does there appear to be a statistically significant effect, which is quite small in comparison to other factors.

Marxist accounts of welfare have been characterized by a critical view of social administration and an uncritical view of the concept of the ‘welfare state’. In this paper both these views are questioned. We explore the problems associated with basing analyses of welfare on the ‘welfare state’ and the limitations of certain criticisms of the ‘social administration tradition’. We conclude that whatever the merits of the more substantive elements in Marxist accounts of welfare, there are problems associated with their assumptions about social administration and the ‘welfare state’.

This paper discusses issues raised by the uneven expansion of private health care in Britain in recent years. The problems being experienced by the industry have exposed divisions in the private health care industry and have provoked criticisms of the Government and requests for a greater degree of state support for, and regulation of, the industry. The paper therefore examines the scope for changes of government policy to facilitate further expansion. It argues that few of the alternatives are either technically adequate, in terms of solving the private sector's problems, or politically feasible, in the sense of being electorally justifiable. It concludes that policies to further private sector expansion could be implemented only at the cost of the private sector's independence, or at the expense of the Government's commitment to the NHS.