In view of this, social policy here concerns purposeful collective actions that influence the distribution of resources. Its analysis is very often, as in this book, driven by concerns about disadvantages and the structures of inequality, and therefore aims to improve welfare conditions and to contribute to social progress. This implies a particular focus on policies with self-evident welfare goals (such as those with respect to income support, health and social care) but also has regard (as for example in the discussions of employment, education and environment issues in this book) to the wide range of policies which have an impact on human welfare.
Social policy and social change
Examining the relationship between social policy and social change assists in delineating some key concepts used to analyze social policy in a way that detaches them from the specific concerns of mature welfare states. The purpose of this approach is to demonstrate the human commonalities that drive social policy development, and to emphasize that the answers to questions of when, how and why people seek to meet their needs collectively take us beyond the concern of ‘policy’ in any formal sense. The discussion will show that welfare is thus dependent upon a mixed economy and a combination of personal and collective efforts, describable in terms of the activities of households and families, localities and communities, and the economy and the state. Concerns about the extension of welfare, its desirability and the means by which it is achieved are matters of philosophical and ideological debate and political action. Social progress occurs as human needs are increasingly met, and human welfare is expanded. Social policy is not entirely responsible for delivering these kinds of improvements to the quality of people’s lives, their health and well-being, but without social policy improvements they are unlikely to occur, and where they do occur they are unlikely to be patterned in a way that promotes social justice.
It is tempting to look back through decades or centuries and make claims that, compared to the world of the early twentieth century for example, contemporary conditions of life such as those in work, habitat, prosperity and security are far removed from the privation experienced before the 1940s and the arrival of the ‘golden age’ of welfare capitalism (although see Wincott, 2013). The 1940s are generally regarded as the decade that propelled the instruments of rapid progress: welfare states, decolonization, international cooperation and economic growth on a continuous upward trajectory which has raised standards of all human life. This is argued to apply, even despite the intervening economic crises, civil and international conflicts and political upheavals. There is evidence to support this claim. In 2010 the UN Human Development Report (UNDP, 2010) included an assessment of changes in the indicators of the Human Development Index (HDI) (using measures of life expectancy, years of schooling and per capita income) from 1970, to show that taken together, all countries showed ‘impressive’ improvements and that the gap between developed and developing countries had narrowed by approximately 25 per cent in forty years.
Despite these claims of human progress, and the real benefits that this has brought to millions of people, the world remains a highly unequal place, and particularly since the global financial crisis in 2008, this inequality has increased along many dimensions. The UNDP report (2010) also presents many examples of failures and reversals in progress which ‘remind us that progress is not linear’ (2010, p. 30). Not only is this the case, but the world regional differentials have not changed either, with sub-Saharan Africa disproportionately represented in countries with reversals in progress, and in the lowest-ranking countries using the HDI measure. As economists (including two previously leading officials of the World Bank) have shown, inequalities of wealth and income began to rise in the decade before 2008 (Piketty, 2014; Atkinson, 2015; Milanovic, 2016; Stiglitz, 2016), but in the post-crisis world many of the equalizing welfare gains made in previous years have been reversed (Ortiz et al., 2015). The evaluation of social progress therefore clearly becomes less certain when further questions are asked regarding who has progressed and what the nature of that progress might be. It is also important to recognize that historical comparisons seeking to remind us how far we have come, especially those based on generalized quantitative measures, also require more context-heavy comparative, qualitative reflection as a counter-balance to the drawing of simple conclusions that progress necessarily accompanies the passing of time.
Where the analysis of social policy is concerned, there is much to consider in terms of social change that can be considered ‘progress’. The example of life expectancy (which is often used as a measure of social development) illustrates well the competing conceptions of ‘progress’, ‘welfare’ and ‘need’ that characterize the analysis and evaluation of social policy. Broadly speaking, it is clear that outside the effects of generalized military conflict in the early and middle periods of the twentieth century, people’s expectations of years of life have increased considerably. However, as research continues to highlight, the level of differentiation in the social distribution of these expectations is striking. Some of these differences are presented in Table 1.1.
Thus, while general trends for longer life, even in the poorest countries, do indicate, as the UNDP (2010) has suggested, that progress has occurred, the beneficiaries of this progress can easily be contrasted with those whose life expectations, both in years lived and the possibilities during those years, remain little different to those of a century ago. What is also apparent is that differences in expectations are shared transnationally, stratified across groups and geographies and not simply the problem of particular countries or regions. A second important theme emerges from the example of life expectancy, which is that progress may not necessarily be a good in itself. Living longer presents its own challenges for maintaining health, income and social participation. Thus the extension of life, both a desire and an outcome associated with development (in human and economic terms), is accompanied by the emergence of related needs. A substantial body of literature exists on the subject of ‘need’ (see Dean, 2010, for a summary of the debates), and what the basis should be for the provision of guarantees that needs are met. From the psycho-social hierarchy developed by Abraham Maslow and conditions of social citizenship outlined by T.H. Marshall in the mid-twentieth century, to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the UN in 2016, the answer to the question of what is needed for a decent human existence centres on the development of social policy.
Table 1.1: Differentiated life expectancy at birth
| Black or African American women in the US (2016) | 77.9 | White women in the US (2016) | 81.0 |
| Women and men born in Central African Republic (2017) | 52.9 | Women and men born in Hong Kong (2017) | 84.1 |
| Women in Sierra Leone (2017) | 52.8 | Women in Australia (2017) | 85.0 |
| Boys born in the north-east of England (2012–14) | 78.0 | Boys born in the south-east of England (2012–14) | 80.5 |
| Increase between 1970 and 2010 in Norway | 7 years | Increase between 1970 and 2010 in the Gambia | 16 years |
Sources: UNDP (2010); US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2017.htm#Figure_001; UNHDP, http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI and http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GDI; Office for National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/lifeexpectancyatbirthandatage65bylocalareasinenglandandwales/2015-11-04#regional-life-expectancy-at-birth.