Bloodshed and mayhem on the streets of any city is tragic, but Boston is particularly disturbing to me. I spent many pleasant spring afternoons wandering the shops around Copley Square and, on one occasion, I cheered on runners at the … Continue reading
Some people just aren’t bothered by welfare cuts. If the cuts don’t affect you personally, and you only discuss them in terms of abstract principles and ‘dependency culture’, then the cuts are distant; the stuff of politicians’ rhetoric and newspaper … Continue reading
In health and social policy we often focus on problems that are bad and getting worse (think obesity or autism among children). Some problems are bad but getting better, and we can learn quite a lot from studying those problems … Continue reading
Perhaps the most socially divisive question in post welfare reform America has been whether the federal government should encourage unmarried parents to wed. The Bush administration plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into its Healthy Marriage Initiative, a program that … Continue reading
The Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen, by a suspicious neighbor has been one of the top stories in the headlines for the last two weeks. It won’t always be. In days or weeks, perhaps, the media will have … Continue reading
Of the endless stream of papers that flash in front of my eyes every week, a large number are ‘Spirit Level style’ – that is, they look at the relationship of inequality and a ‘bad thing’ between countries/areas. If I … Continue reading
I know I’ve already talked about ‘deservingness’ among benefit claimants – but if UK newspaper and lobby groups keep making claims about it, then I’m just going to have to keep writing about it. Just after Christmas there was a … Continue reading
In a guest post, Craig Berry argues that we need to look at intergenerational relations – including the capture of wealth by the baby boomers – to truly understand the London riots. England’s riots expose an inconvenient truth: Britain has become a highly unequal … Continue reading
It’s hard to write about anything else today. The papers full of images of buildings and cars burning, reports of looting scattered across London and in other cities besides, police and blue tape everywhere. Last night I saw youths – … Continue reading
Here are some headlines from 2008: “Keeping Wary Eye on Crime as Economy Sinks” – New York Times (October 9) “Economic downturn hits U.S. police with double whammy” – Reuters (October 21) “Will Recession Make Cities Dangerous Again?” – ABC … Continue reading
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