Linda McDowell (2013), Working Lives: Gender, migration and employment, 1945–2007. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. £24.99, 294 pp., pbk (original) (raw)

Journal of Social Policy, 2014

Abstract

social security system. I liked the sentence in Ulmestig’s conclusion that begins ‘Despite the lack of evidence the government chose to handle the problem . . . ’ (p. 194). Resemblances to contemporary UK policy making are not unnoticed. In van Berkel’s chapter, the solution in the Netherlands to what was characterised as the ‘Dutch disease’ (that is high disability payments) will be familiar to a UK readership: tighter eligibility rules and increased conditionality loom large, but these are complemented by obligations placed on employers to contribute to the rehabilitation of workers with health problems. In the chapter on New Zealand, Lunt and Horsfall describe a shift in policy from macro-level to micro-level interventions aimed at particular groups, in specific circumstances within defined labour markets. It is an approach which resonates with the policy recommendations in the chapters by Webster et al. and Beatty et al. The chapters in the central part of the book not only diagnose the problem of rising disability claimant rolls, there are ideas for policy developments. Beatty et al. (in Chapter 8) provide the most succinct summary of the need for action, arguing for a range of demand side measures including national economic recovery and regional development, and familiar supply side responses such as increasing employability, skills, motivation and health. There are of course a few things about the volume that raise some questions (at least in the mind of this reviewer). The first is this: where does the notion of a ‘crisis’ in disability benefits come from. The word is used predominantly by the editors in the opening and closing chapters and seems to suggest that this is a given. Certainly, the rise in claimant rolls has been identified in many countries as undesirable but I am not sure what purpose is served by construing a social policy issue as a crisis. Indeed, it is a related, minor gripe with the book that there is a departure sometimes from sober, academic analysis and language (generally one of the strengths of the book) into emotive, often unsubstantiated assertions and polemic. To talk of ‘industrial policy wantonly allowing great swathes of manufacturing and engineering to wither on the vine’ (p. 234) is vague and unhelpful. If there is a gap in the book, and this is not a weakness more a consequence of timing, it is that the contributors could not engage with the major changes in policy that have been, or are in the process of being, introduced in the UK since the election of the Coalition government in 2010, including the Work Programme and Universal Credit. However, the silver lining here is that there is now an opening for the editors (I am sure they have spotted this already) to compile a second volume that can place recent policy initiatives in the context of developments before 2010 and developments more widely in Europe and beyond. Disability benefits, welfare reform and employment policy is a constantly changing arena – I look forward to the next instalment.

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