Presenting a new defamilization and familization framework for investigating the residualization of old‐age income security measures—The case study of Hong Kong

Familisation and defamilisation studies are increasingly seen as an important component of welfare research. They are concerned with the threats to individuals’ welfare caused by involuntary participation in the unwanted family relationship. Moreover, they address that the government has the potential to reduce these threats through the provision of welfare measures. This article is intended to contribute to the familisation and defamilisaion studies with the focus on the link between these studies and the studies of residualisation strategies. It has two objectives. The first is to present a new defamilisation and familisation framework for examining the implications of the residualisation strategies used by the government to reform the old age income security system. The second is to demonstrate the empirical significance of this framework. To meet these objectives, three analytical tasks are conducted – i. to discuss the key elements of the defamilisation and familisation, ii. to examine the usefulness of this framework in the analysis of the residualisation strategies, and iii. to apply this framework to the investigation of the main old age income security measures in Hong Kong

Defamilisation/familisation measures and pensions in Hong Kong and Taiwan

This article discusses the link between familisation measures (to lower the negative consequences of participating in the family as a care-provider) and defamilisation measures (to reduce individual responsibility for providing care in the family), and pensions for women. To enhance women’s chance of having a secure retirement life, it makes two suggestions: government should provide defamilisation measures to assist women to accumulate pension income through work-based pension measures; and government should provide familisation measures extensively as an alternative to these measures. It also demonstrates how the case examples of Hong Kong and Taiwan provide support to these two suggestions

Advancing an energy justice perspective of fuel poverty: Household vulnerability and domestic retrofit policy in the United Kingdom

The concept of energy justice has brought philosophies of ethics and principles of social justice to bear on a range of contemporary energy issues. More inter-disciplinary and applied endeavours are now needed to take this field forward. One such application is to the issue of fuel poverty and the challenge of retrofitting inefficient housing stock. An energy justice perspective sees fuel poverty as a fundamentally socio-political injustice, not just one of uneven distribution. Starting from this premise, we highlight the multiple injustices faced by two groups who are regarded by policymakers as being particularly vulnerable to fuel poverty: disabled people and low-income families. In the UK, these groups are nominally prioritised within fuel poverty policy, but their complex situations are not always fully appreciated. Building on the theoretical foundations of energy justice, we present an inter-disciplinary dialogue that connects this approach with wider vulnerability research and domestic energy efficiency policy. Specifically, we discuss ‘within group’ heterogeneity (recognition justice), stakeholder engagement in policy and governance (procedural justice) and the overlap of multiple structural inequalities (distributional justice). In each section we illustrate the added value of combining justice and vulnerability conceptualisations by linking them to domestic energy efficiency schemes

Towards an EU measure of child deprivation

This paper proposes a new measure of child material and social deprivation (MSD) in the European Union (EU) which includes age appropriate child-specific information available from the thematic deprivation modules included in the 2009 and 2014 waves of the “EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions” (EU‑SILC). It summarises the main results of the in-depth analysis of these two datasets, identifies an optimal set of robust children MSD items and recommends a child‑specific MSD indicator for use by EU countries and the European Commission in their regular social monitoring. In doing this, the paper replicates and expands on the methodological framework outlined in Guio, Gordon and Marlier (2012), particularly by including additional advanced reliability tests

Does the financial crisis create opportunities for taxing wealth? A study of tax policy debates in the United Kingdom

Taxing wealth is an important part of tax policy debates today. The prospect though for taxing wealth seems to be bleak. But does the financial crisis create opportunities for taxing wealth? The financial crisis might change debates by acting as a shock to the tax policy process and boost political arguments for taxing wealth. This article explores whether the financial crisis has such an impact by looking at tax policy debates in the United Kingdom. The article looks at examples of three main ways of taxing wealth, namely, proposals for an inheritance tax, mansion tax and capital gains tax. This article argues that the financial crisis has an impact on political debates but that its impact is uneven. The financial crisis provides a greater boost for a mansion tax idea over inheritance tax or capital gains tax. However, political arguments for taxing wealth are refracted by other factors such as lobbying by vested interests