welfare

Topic description and stories

Queen Elizabeth I by unknown continental artist (c.1575), NPG 2082. Image: The National Portrait Gallery, London

Queen Elizabeth I would tell Boris to tax the rich rather than cut universal credit, a new book argues

11 Oct 2021

A new book about how Covid-19 rocked the world argues that Elizabeth I would have supported the poor in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Medics transferring injured protesters in Abbassiya Square, Egypt , Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy

Military spending did not 'crowd out' welfare in Middle East prior to Arab Spring

24 Jul 2018

Findings dispute 'guns versus butter' narrative as a major factor behind the Arab Spring. Researchers caution against uncritically applying lessons...

Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”.

Cutting welfare to protect the economy ignores lessons of history, researchers claim

02 Dec 2016

Amid ongoing welfare cuts, researchers argue that investment in health and social care have been integral to British economic success since 1600.

A full-page newspaper advert used to promote MNREGA

Drowning in a paper sea: India’s welfare efforts failed by its peculiar bureaucracy

21 Jul 2016

India’s sophisticated laws and progressive policies fail with startling regularity. A new study locates a possible reason as to why in the convoluted...

Honeypot Britain? EU migrants’ benefits and the UK referendum

25 Feb 2016

Ahead of Britain’s EU referendum, research will explore the experiences of EU migrants working in the UK, and attitudes to employment and social...

Study finds premise behind bedroom tax is ‘fundamentally flawed’

18 Jun 2014

A new study shows that more than half of English homes - which are the smallest by floor area in Europe - fall short of modern space standards...

Understanding the “new migration age”

03 Feb 2014

Today, we commence a month-long focus on research on migration. To begin, Professor Madeleine Arnot and Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, Co-Convenors of...

Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire. A new report argues that changes to the ways in which housing benefits are administered are likely to force large numbers of people who rent from the council or housing associations in rural areas out of their communities

Benefit changes raise pressure on country life

14 May 2012

Significant numbers of social tenants in rural areas may have to move away from their friends and communities because of changes to housing benefit...

Benefiting from history

24 Feb 2012

A Cambridge academic’s research into the final days of the Old English Poor Law has thrown up some remarkable parallels to today’s welfare state –...