Making a success of welfare reform has as much to do with implementation as with policy design. The experience in Wisconsin and New York generalises too much of the US, with states divided into those successfully implementing work-based reform, those incapacitated by partisan divisions and those that have never seriously framed welfare policy. Three decisions are key: the degree of toughness, the amount of programme integration; and the locus of administrative control which are shaped by long standing differences in political culture, moralistic, individualistic and traditionalistic. States adopting a moralistic approach to policy administration generally achieve most success.

This article reviews the burgeoning literature on work–life balance and family-friendly policies in European countries, noting the new interdisciplinary dialogue between traditional ‘work’ and ‘family’ disciplines. It examines the findings from interviews with economic actors, suggesting that, while work–life balance and family-friendly policies are an issue everywhere, progress is very uneven. Overall, strong traditional family policies have not contributed to work–life balance, since they are predicated on a traditional male breadwinner model. A combination of strong demand for female labour in the service sector and equal opportunities policies is, however, causing employers and government to address the issue.

Social capital has become an increasingly popular concept within some academic and government circles as a means of exploring how communities can embark upon a process of civic renewal by establishing bridges of reciprocity between community members from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. In this article we place the popularity of social capital within the historical context of the ‘hollowing out of the welfare state’. This allows us to highlight four interrelated problems that hollowing out processes pose for the establishment of social capital in the UK today.

This paper presents a case study of frauds committed by offshore companies in the California auto insurance market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The opportunities for these crimes were created by two factors: the departure of legitimate insurance companies from the market and the adoption of deregulatory policies by state regulators. The case study illustrates some of the consequences of the increasingly common situation in the US in which consumers find themselves abandoned both by government and by legitimate providers of goods and services. The criminal consequences of this situation have also been observed in other markets.

This article sifts the evidence to explain why welfare caseloads have fallen so markedly in the US since 1993. In particular, it seeks to explain the discrepancy between studies that identify welfare reform as the principal explanatory factor and those that emphasise the buoyant economy. Analyses that prioritise welfare are shown to be mis-specified while a comparative analysis of all 51 states shows a strong link between welfare trends and macroeconomic performance. The expansion of Earned Income Tax Credit has also contributed to the fall in welfare caseloads.

This article examines the extent to which the growing attention being paid at EU and national level to issues related to work–life balance is reflected in families' lived experience. It identifies the demands facing families in balancing paid work with other activities, the strategies they adopt to meet them, and the role played by policy interventions. Attention is drawn to diversity in family structures and labour market participation throughout Europe, to differences in the issues encountered by families in achieving a satisfactory work–life balance, and to the contribution of policy to their strategies.

Feminists campaigning for the abolition of prostitution have long argued that it is men who buy sex, rather than prostitute women, who should be penalised and reformed. In recent years, the phenomenon of ‘trafficking’ in persons has provided feminist abolitionists with a more high profile platform from which to lobby on prostitution issues, and they have found policy makers increasingly receptive to calls to penalise men who buy sex. This has encouraged some feminist abolitionists to forge alliances with those who would more usually be viewed as ‘enemies’ of feminism and other progressive social movements (police chiefs calling for more extensive police powers and tougher sentencing policy, anti-immigration politicians calling for tighter border controls, and moral conservatives urging a return to ‘family values’). This paper is concerned with the dangers of such liaisons. It begins with a brief review of the findings of recent research on the demand for commercial sexual services, then puts forward some reasons why feminist abolitionists should be cautious about calling on the state to penalise sex buyers.

This paper analyses existing research on social capital, school choice and educational attainment to consider the questions that need to be answered if the role of social capital in reducing or extending social inequality is to be addressed. We identify a need to distinguish between: social surveillance and genuinely educative forms of social capital; between parent–pupil interactions and family: school links that generate positive external spin-overs and those that simply enhance the competitive position of the individual child. We argue for a more gendered and more child-centred analysis of social capital that considers the role of social capital in protecting and enhancing school reputation, and for an analysis which considers possible linkages between bonding, bridging and linking social capital.

In this paper we outline some key aspects of the relationship between ethnicity and social capital in contemporary British society. This is a question that has begun to attract a good deal of attention in recent times, particularly in the context of public debate about the changing position of ethnic minority groups and migrant communities within an increasingly multicultural society. We begin by looking at the ways in which the relationship between ethnicity and social capital has been conceptualised. We then explore the ways that the notion of social capital has begun to shape policy debates about ethnicity and families. In doing so we seek to highlight the limitations of existing accounts and the kinds of questions that need to be addressed in conceptual and empirical research.

The combination of population ageing, changing family structures and patterns of employment is having an increasing impact on intergenerational relations in Western societies. The ‘generational contract’ is being affected by women's growing labour market participation, especially among mothers with young children, the extension of the period spent in education and training and the curtailment of welfare expansion. Since women carry the main burden of care work, the organisation of social care is a key issue in understanding changing intergenerational relations. This article explores the perceptions that European families in different socio-political contexts have of changing intergenerational relations and their expectations of policy actors.

This article focuses on two aspects of the real or imagined conflict between welfarism and consumerism; whether the experience of being a welfare user is somehow changed by living in a society in which people may see themselves less as workers and more as consumers; and whether the providers of welfare services and benefits can or should treat their users more like consumers than beneficiaries or even citizens with welfare rights.

The Fragile Families Study, a survey of 5,000 children representative of all non-marital births in US cities with populations of over 200,000, provides new evidence on the characteristics of unmarried parents and their children. Initial analyses reported in this article reveal that the typical unmarried mother is in her early twenties and cohabiting at the birth of her children. Almost one third are Hispanic and 51 per cent non-Hispanic black. The great majority of unwed parents are committed to each other and their children at the time of birth but most are poorly equipped to support themselves and their children.

Three major emphases in interpretations of the state of contemporary intimate relationships can be broadly characterised. These are (i) breakdown and demoralisation; (ii) individualisation and democratisation; and (iii) a recognition of elements of continuity, particularly around power relations. We consider these three positions, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, relating them to key themes of identities and values, networks and trust and reciprocity, and major theorisations of the concept of social capital. We offer a critique of existing positions and suggestions for the future, cast in the light of potential policy relevance.

Falling welfare rolls in the US has focussed attention on those remaining on the caseload, variously termed the ‘hard to serve’ or ‘difficult to employ’. Using data from the first three years of the Women's Employment Study, a sample of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) recipients drawn in an urban county in Michigan, this article examines the barriers that inhibit people moving off welfare. The analysis indicates that the kinds of skill deficits and other personal problems experienced by welfare recipients are not frequently and systematically addressed within the rapid-employment, welfare to work models widely implemented across the USA.

C. Lodziak (2002) The Myth of Consumerism, Pluto Press, London. S. Miles, A. Anderson and K. Meetham (eds) (2002) The Changing Consumer: Markets and Meanings, Routledge, London and New York.

S. Baron, J. Field and T. Schuller (eds) (2000) Social Capital: Critical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford

A. Portes (1998) ‘Social capital: its origins and perspectives in modern sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 243, 1, 1–24.

R. Putnam (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act required reauthorisation by September 30, 2002. This article describes and explains the political machinations that meant that as of November 2002, this had not occurred. Copious research fed the consensus that the 1996 reforms had been a success and, in the context of a muted debate that lacked vision, political expediency ruled the day. While minor deficiencies of the system may be tackled in 2003, for the most part the major weaknesses will probably endure.

The items selected below to exemplify recent literature on the European family policy process from national and international perspectives highlight the specificity of family policy research, as reported in the themed articles in this issue of the journal. The publications cited indicate both the need for country-specific solutions and for cross-national comparative research, where potentially transportable examples of best practice can be identified. In multinational studies that straddle the developed countries of western Europe and the emerging countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the contrastive dimension is a key and driving factor of the analysis. Notwithstanding the similarities – in demographic trends, changes in family formation, education and labour market participation – the contrasts remain overwhelming and reflect the specific conditions obtaining in any given country. In turn, these conditions are reflected in the central themes and preoccupations of the analyses of national policy agencies, non-governmental organisations and academics. The position of family-related issues in the respective policy hierarchy is most obviously reflected in the institutional location of these issues. In all European countries, the dominant imperative of economic growth and stability leads to family policy being subsumed predominantly under ministries of social affairs. The experience of former communist states with rapidly growing income disparities, unemployment and meagre state funding has produced a patchwork of institutional and policy initiatives, dominated by the imperative of economic growth and modernisation. The disappearance of the comprehensive infrastructure of childcare in former state socialist countries compounds the problems of adjustment and helps to define the focus of post-communist research. A common feature in many European countries is that, notwithstanding self-funded research on the part of university research groups and NGOs, the influence of ministerial funding priorities on family policy research also determines the focus and weighting of national research output.