John Veit-Wilson: Publications and Notes

For personal details see John Veit-Wilson's profile at Newcastle University.

This website contains some of John Veit-Wilson's publications and other papers about various aspects of poverty, including:

What is meant by 'adequate' incomes, the human right to adequate incomes, and how could they be achieved.
What are governmental minimum income standards, how have they been used to set income adequacy standards in countries around the world, and what are a welfare state's responsibilities.
Answers to ten common myths about the impossibility of raising minimum incomes to decency levels.
Encyclopaedia definitions of poverty (authoritative because doubly peer-reviewed), and the ways in which they are used and measured.
The truth about the Beveridge Committee's choice of benefit levels, which shows they were never designed to be adequate for social inclusion, and the unique history of the only UK government in-house study of benefit adequacy, which contradicts government assertions that adequacy cannot be measured.
The reasons for the income tax-free personal allowance [the tax threshold] and its history in the UK.
Evidence to Parliamentary Committees and government departments on minimum incomes, benefit simplification, poverty measurement and other responses to enquiries.
Book reviews on poverty and social policy topics.
Other notes on social policy topics.

Documents are provided in Portable Document Format (PDF), which requires Adobe Reader.

John Veit-Wilson's other publications are not yet available on the internet. They include papers on Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree's poverty research work and other material on understanding and measuring poverty.

Income adequacy and rights

2008	"What do we mean by 'adequate' benefits?" Chapter 14 in J Strelitz and R Lister [eds], Why Money Matters. Family income, poverty and children's lives. Save the Children, London, pp 125-132.
1999	"Poverty and the adequacy of social security." Chapter 4 in J Ditch (ed), Introduction to Social Security. Policies, benefit and poverty. Routledge, London, pp 78-109.
2007	"Some social policy implications of a right to social security." Chapter in J Van Langendonck [ed], The Right to Social Security, Intersentia, Antwerp, pp 57-83.
2006	"No rights without remedies: necessary conditions for abolishing child poverty." European Journal of Social Security, 8/3, September 2006, pp 317-337.
2002	"Researching Poverty and the Poor." [Review Article] Journal of Social Policy, 31/3, pp 537-544. [Reprinted with permission]
2004	"Poverty, incomes and resources – concepts and measures." Chapter in N Manning and N Tikhonova [eds], Poverty and Social Exclusion in the New Russia, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 37-62.
2004	"Human dignity, social indicators and social inclusion" Discussion paper for ESPAnet European Social Policy Conference, University of Oxford, September 2004.

Minimum Income Standards and policies; welfare states

1998	Setting adequacy standards: How governments define minimum incomes. The Policy Press, Bristol. [Copyright © The Policy Press] ISBN: 1 86134 072 9 [out of print] As the UK government currently has no Minimum Income Standards (MIS) to assess the adequacy of minimum wages, tax thresholds or social security benefits, Setting adequacy standards reports how the governments of ten countries world-wide set their MIS. The report suggests how MIS can be used among other strategies to combat poverty. This is the first study: of the methods which the governments of ten countries used in setting minimum standards of adequacy for their income maintenance systems and the ideas they were based on; to distinguish between the scientific activity of discovering poverty lines, and the political activity of setting governmental MIS; to report on the disparate ways in which poverty is officially perceived in different countries and their implications for cross-national studies and policy making. Setting adequacy standards concludes by showing how the UK government should go about setting a MIS which is publicly acceptable, methodologically defensible and administratively feasible.
2001	"Triangulation of Data from Existing Sources as a Basis for a Governmental Minimum Income Standard." In: House of Commons Social Security Committee, [eds], Integrated Child Credit, HC 72, The Stationery Office, London, pp 109-126. Available with minutes of oral evidence from the Parliament website.
2005	"Can poverty be abolished?" Church Action on Poverty News, Autumn 2005, p 9.
2000	"Horses for Discourses: poverty, purpose and closure in minimum income standards policy." [Original version of] Chapter 7 in: D Gordon and P Townsend [eds], Breadline Europe:The Measurement of Poverty. The Policy Press, Bristol, pp 141-164.
2000	"States of Welfare: A Conceptual Challenge." [Note: what is a welfare state?] Social Policy and Administration, 34/1, pp 1-25.
2002	"States of Welfare: A Response to Charles Atherton." Social Policy and Administration, 36/3, pp 312-317.

Ten myths about the feasibility of minimum incomes

2007	"Minimum Income - Myths and Realities." In: European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Campaign for Adequate Minimum Incomes, "Adequate minimum income: everybody deserves a decent life".
2009	"Myths and Realities 2 - Adequate Minimum Income" In: European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Campaign for Adequate Minimum Incomes, "Ensure an Adequate Minimum Income for All!", available from EAPN.

Encyclopaedia definitions and discussion of meanings

2006

Published in Routledge International Encyclopaedia of Social Policy:

Poverty
Minimum Income Standards
Income Maintenance
Marginal Tax Rate

2005

Published in Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social Theory:

Poverty

The Beveridge Committee's choice of benefit levels and the UK government study of benefit adequacy

1992

"Muddle or Mendacity? The Beveridge Committee and the Poverty Line."
Journal of Social Policy, 21/3, pp 269-301 [Reprinted with permission.] NB: misprints to be corrected: [1] p 291, table 1, line 'Beveridge 1942 Child' total should read 7/- not 17/-; [2] p 292 second paragraph, second sentence, should read "Not only Rowntree but also Bowley [T230 ... " In the acknowledgements DHSS should have been noted as Social Security not Services.

1999

"The National Assistance Board and the 'Rediscovery' of Poverty"
Chaper 7 in: H Fawcett and R Lowe [eds], Welfare Policy in Britain. The Road from 1945. Macmillan, Basingstoke, in association with Institute of Contemporary British History. [Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.]

The basis of the income tax threshold [personal allowance]

1999	"The Tax Threshold: Policy, Principles and Poverty." Twentieth Century British History, 10/2, 218-234.

Parliamentary committees and government consultations

2001	"Triangulation of Data from Existing Sources as a Basis for a Governmental Minimum Income Standard." In: House of Commons Social Security Committee, [eds], Integrated Child Credit, HC 72, The Stationery Office, London, pp 109-126. Available with minutes of oral evidence from the Parliament website.
2004	"Memorandum on measuring child poverty" In: House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee [eds], Child Poverty in the UK: Second report of Session 2003-04; vol 2: Written Evidence, HC85-III, pp 146-164; also available from the Parliament website.
2003	"Measuring child poverty: the government's consultation." Benefits, no 36, 11/1, pp 51-55.
2006	"Response to DWP consultation paper, Cm 6730 dated January 2006, A new deal for welfare: empowering people to work" Unpublished paper sent to DWP, April 2006
2007	"Memorandum on Simplification" In: House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee (eds), Benefits Simplification: Seventh Report of Session 2006-07. HC 463-II, London: TSO. pp. 217-224.
2007	"Memorandum on 'what is poverty?' and Minimum Income Standards", together with further Memorandum and Oral Evidence. In: House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee (eds), Poverty in Scotland: Second Report of Session 2007-08, Volume II, 11 December 2007, pp Ev 47-52 [written evidence] and Ev 53-Ev 69 [oral evidence]. HC 128-II, London: TSO. Available from the Parliament website.
1997	"Playing a political game? Civil servants and the adequacy of National Assistance." [Unpublished] paper for the ESRC Whitehall Programme conference 'Whitehall in the 1950s and 1960s', Public Record Office, Kew, 16-17 April 1997.

Book reviews on poverty and social policy topics

2002	European Journal of Social Security, 4/1, 77-82. Book reviews of: Matti Heikkilä and Elsa Keskitalo (eds.), Social Assistance in Europe: A comparative study on minimum income in seven European countries. Synthesis Report, Helsinki, STAKES National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, 2001. Yuri Kazepov and Stefania Sabatinelli, How Generous Social Assistance Schemes are? A Comparative Analysis of Benefit Levels, Helsinki, STAKES National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, 2001.
2003	European Journal of Social Security, 5/3, 269-271. Book review of: Christina Behrendt, At the Margins of the Welfare State: Social assistance and the alleviation of poverty in Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002.
2004	"My book of the year", SPA News, March, p 23.
2004	Journal of Social Policy, 33/2, pp 340-342. Book review of: Ian Gazeley, Poverty in Britain, 1900-1965, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003.
2005	Benefits, no 43, vol 13, issue 2, pp 165-166. Book review in Benefits of: Didier Fouarge, Poverty and Subsidiarity in Europe: Minimum Protection from an Economic Perspective, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004.
2005	Journal of Social Policy, vol 34 no 4 October 2005, pp 683-685. Book reviews of: Howard Glennerster, John Hills, David Piachaud and Jo Webb, One hundred years of poverty and policy, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 2004. Lucinda Platt, Discovering child poverty. The creation of a policy agenda from 1800 to the present, The Policy Press, Bristol, 2005.
2006	International Journal of Social Welfare, vol 15 no 4, October 2006, pp 363-365. Book review of: Chak Kwan Chan and Graham Bowpitt, Human Dignity and Welfare Systems, The Policy Press, Bristol, 2005.
2007	Journal of Social Policy, vol 36 no 4, October 2007, pp 671-672. Book review of: Polly Vizard, Poverty and Human Rights, OUP 2006.
2008	Benefits, vol 16 no 1, pp 113-115. Book review in Benefits of: Paul Spicker, The Idea of Poverty, The Policy Press, Bristol, 2007.