Social Security and Wage Poverty Historical and Policy Aspects of Supplementing Wages in Britian and Beyond

This is the first book to examine debates about, and the practice of, state supplementing of wages. It charts the historical development of such policies from prohibition in the 1830s and how opposition to it was overcome in the 1970s, thereby allowing the increasing supplementation of the wages of poorly paid working people.

1. Introduction
2. Wage supplements and the New Poor Law
3. Wage supplements and poor relief in the 1920s: Norfolk's agricultural labourers
4. Wage supplements and Public Assistance in the 1930s: Lancashire's cotton weavers
5. Family Allowance, the 'rediscovery of poverty' and the rejection of means-tested wage supplements
6. Family Income Supplement: reintroducing means-tested wage supplements
7. Family Credit, wage suppression and the 'think tank'
8. Tax Credits, wage worklessness and child poverty
9. Universal Credit: wage supplements and 'mini jobs'
10. Minimum and 'living' wages: alternatives to wage supplements?
11. International experiences of wage supplements: New Zealand and the USA
12. Conclusion

Chris Grover is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Lancaster University, UK. Interested in political economy, he has written extensively on relationships between wage work and social security policy. His recent books include an edited collection (with Linda Piggott) on disability benefits and work, and the loaning of social security payments.