In the past two decades, the question of how pension systems should be designed to offer ‘adequate and sustainable pensions for all’ has been raised. As a result, European pension systems, in which market principles in general have played a marginal or even negligible role in the past, were redesigned, with market-based pensions becoming part of the pension calculation norm, i.e. the institutionalised and nationally defined target level for old-age protection. However, since the hybrid pension systems are institutionalised very differently, pension systems’ ingredients, characteristics and nexus are far from being homogeneous, and the role of market principles in hybrid systems differs. These differences significantly determine the degree of social protection of the various social citizens and the number of future pensioners with adequate pensions. An illustrative comparison of the contrasting Dutch and German institutional setups indicates differences in the manner in which market principles have been strengthened in the pension system, and the related effects these differences have on social-risk spreading.

The use of behavioural economics to inform policy has over recent years been captured by those who advocate nudge interventions. Nudge is a non-regulatory approach that attempts to motivate individual behaviour change through subtle alterations in the choice environments that people face. It is argued in this article that government interventions ought to be more overt than that traditionally advocated by nudge adherents, and that governments should principally attempt to influence behaviour if the acts of those targeted are causing harm to others. With this in mind, governments can use the findings of behavioural economics, including present bias and loss aversion, to inform where and how to regulate directly against undesirable private sector activities. This behavioural economic-informed method of regulation is hereby termed budge, to indicate that, rather than nudging citizens, behavioural economics might be used more appropriately in the public sector to help inform regulation that budges harmful private sector activities.

The ‘unitary household’ lives on in policymakers’ assumptions about couples sharing their finances. Yet financial autonomy is seen as a key issue in gender relations, particularly for women. This article draws on evidence from semi-structured individual interviews with men and women in thirty low-/moderate-income couples in Britain. The interviews explored whether financial autonomy had any meaning to these individuals; and, if so, to what extent this was gendered in the sense of there being differences in men's and women's understanding of it. We develop a framework for the investigation of financial autonomy, involving several dimensions: achieving economic independence, having privacy in one's financial affairs and exercising agency in relation to household and/or personal spending. We argue that financial autonomy is a relevant issue for low-/moderate-income couples, and that women are more conscious of tensions between financial togetherness and autonomy due to their greater responsibility for managing togetherness and lower likelihood of achieving financial independence. Policymakers should therefore not discount the aspirations of women in particular for financial autonomy, even in low-/moderate-income couples where there remain significant obstacles to achieving this. Yet plans for welfare reform that rely on means testing and ignore intra-household dynamics in relation to family finances threaten to exacerbate these obstacles and reinforce a unitary family model.

Rising prison numbers and high rates of re-offending illustrate the need for criminal justice reform. In the social care sector, the ‘personalisation revolution’ has resulted in the near eradication of long-term, institutional care for the majority of people with disabilities and many frail older people, increasing satisfaction. This paper examines what this has entailed and considers the case for introducing personalisation in the criminal justice system. It concludes that criminal justice reformers can learn from the social care experience and suggests how personalisation might fit within the current criminal justice reform agenda. However, introducing personalisation will pose significant challenges, perhaps the biggest being the need to change criminal justice culture.

Is China a welfare state? If so, how big is it and what does it look like? Further, how does the Chinese welfare state affect income inequality? Is it progressive or regressive? Using the China Household Income Project 1988–2007 data, this article provides updated empirical evidence on the size, structure and redistributive effect of the Chinese welfare state. We find that the Chinese welfare state is highly divided along urban–rural lines: the urban social benefit system, or the urban welfare state, stands among the more comprehensive and generous ones, similar to those in the western industrialised countries, while the rural system is minimal and residual, and similar to those in the least developed countries. The urban system has consistently reduced income inequality and has remained progressive over time. The rural system has had little impact on reducing income inequality and has been largely regressive. Social benefit for migrants has seen significant increases between 2002 and 2007 and has played an increasingly larger redistributive role. These results and recent policy changes suggest that the Chinese welfare state is likely to become more integrated, generous and progressive in the future.

Defining asset poverty as insufficiency of assets to satisfy household basic needs for a limited period of time, the study examines asset-poverty rates in urban China using the 2002 survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP). We find that asset-poverty rates in urban China are lower than those of developed countries, in part due to Chinese households’ strong commitment to precautionary savings and the low poverty standards. However, the liquid asset-poverty rate is five times that of the income-poverty rate in urban China. Notably, the asset-poverty-gap ratio shows that most households in asset poverty have zero liquid assets or negative net worth. Asset building could be an integral part of the anti-poverty agenda to protect the poor from economic hardship and provide them with opportunities for economic growth.

Meetings between advisers and claimants are central to many welfare-to-work programmes. These ‘street-level’ exchanges between clients and staff are critical to the implementation of policy. When talking to welfare claimants, it becomes clear that contact with welfare bureaucrats is constitutive of their experience of policy and it is not until parent and adviser meet and negotiate that the policy is truly enacted. The policy comes into being through an exchange between advisers and parents, who interact, albeit unequally, to shape the proceedings. This paper examines the experience of parents claiming income support who faced compulsory employment measures. Drawing on research with claimants of teenage children, I examine the adviser meeting as an interpellative interaction. The state addresses mothers as workers and welfare claimants in an interpellation which is mediated by the adviser in dialogue with the mother. This analysis demonstrates how the notion of interpellation can inform research on street-level interactions.

The Work Programme's use of severe social security benefit sanctions reflects British coalition ministers’ belief that many people on out-of-work benefits do not want a job. While a substantial empirical literature has repeatedly demonstrated that in fact unemployed benefit claimants possess the same work values as the employed and that the vast majority want paid work, it has ignored some conservative authors’ pleas to consider the views and experiences of people who work with the unemployed. Forty employees of agencies contracted to help unemployed people into employment were interviewed in summer 2011. Respondents had spent an estimated combined total of 147,000 hours in the presence of people who have claimed Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) for over six months. Most said that between a quarter and half of their present clients did not want employment. This finding does not contradict existing research, given that most JSA claimants re-enter employment within six months. However, all forty agreed that many others remained unemployed because they were choosy in the jobs they were willing to undertake, and, most strikingly, respondents overwhelmingly endorsed the view that a ‘dependency culture’ exists in households and neighbourhoods that have experienced joblessness for several generations.

Andrew Dunn challenges social policy researchers to include the perspectives of other policy actors in the debate about the merits and limits of activation policies that emphasise greater conditionality for those in receipt of benefits. In his provocative article, he focuses on the views and experiences of people who work with unemployed people. His study focuses on a sample of forty employment advisers in the UK and his particular interest is in their attitudes about unemployment and the unemployed, particular their views on the ‘welfare dependency’ thesis. While his discussion of these issues is interesting and engaging, there are a number of limitations that deserve further discussion.