A B S T R AC TOver the last twenty years, policy-makers have placed increasing emphasis on individual planning, particularly in relation to pensions. Planning for one's own future, and that of one's family, is increasingly upheld as a morally responsible activity. This article explores the assumptions made by policy-makers in this area. It begins with a discussion of how the rhetoric from policy-makers and policy-commentators makes considerable reference to individual planning and responsibility. The policies themselves, however, sometimes act as disincentives to make private provision and do relatively little to provide security for people's future retirement. The article then draws on empirical research including recent qualitative findings to emphasise the limited nature of private pension planning and the constraints people face in relation to this activity.

Despite increasing interest in household assets and debts, little is known about the way these are distributed and controlled within couples. Our understanding of these issues is important in social policy not least because some areas of policy (e.g. social security means-tests) assume that all couples, whether married/civil partnered or not, share assets equally, whereas other areas of policy, such as the law around intestacy or separation/divorce, make very different assumptions about married/civil partnered couples compared with cohabiting couples. But is there a difference between these couples or not? And are the assumptions made about each type of couple accurate? Our research suggests that the division of assets within couples is complex with formal, legal ownership of assets (housing, pensions, savings) and debts not always matching participants' 'perceptions' of who owns them. And while there does seem to be a difference between cohabiting and married couples, there is also variation within these couples as other factors also influence the division of assets.

There is a long tradition in social policy of discussing and critiquing the notion of ‘deservingness’ in relation to ‘the poor’. This paper will apply such debates to ‘the rich’ to consider the grounds on which this group might be considered ‘deserving’. The paper identifies three sets of arguments. The first set of arguments concerns the appropriateness of rewarding merit/hard work/effort/risk-taking etc. The second concerns more consequentialist/economic arguments about providing incentives for wealth creation. And the third considers the character and behaviour of the rich. As well as discussing the potential criteria for deservingness, the paper will also debate whether the degree of income and wealth gained by the rich is deserved. Finally, the paper will discuss the social policy implications, including taxation policies, which emerge from this debate.

Concern about the increasing use of payday lending led the UK's Financial Conduct Authority to introduce landmark reforms in 2014/15. While these reforms have generally been welcomed as a way of curbing ‘extortionate’ and ‘predatory’ lending, this paper presents a more nuanced picture based on a theoretically-informed analysis of the growth and nature of payday lending combined with original and rigorous qualitative interviews with customers. We argue that payday lending has grown as a result of three major and inter-related trends: growing income insecurity for people both in and out of work; cuts in state welfare provision; and increasing financialisation. Recent reforms of payday lending do nothing to tackle these root causes. Our research also makes a major contribution to debates about the ‘everyday life’ of financialisation by focusing on the ‘lived experience’ of borrowers. We show that, contrary to the rather simplistic picture presented by the media and many campaigners, various aspects of payday lending are actually welcomed by customers, given the situations they are in. Tighter regulation may therefore have negative consequences for some. More generally, we argue that the regul(aris)ation of payday lending reinforces the shift in the role of the state from provider/redistributor to regulator/enabler.

The size and source of the gender wage gap in Britain has been well researched. Women's typically lower status employment and their reduced, discontinuous career profiles when they have caring responsibilities have combined seriously to damage their ability to earn a decent wage. Such marked gender differences in employment patterns produce a substantial gender gap in levels of wealth too, yet despite this there has been less attention paid to the gendering of assets than there has to gender differentials in earnings and income. So to pull out these multi-dimensional effects of a gender disadvantaged labour market, this article explores the extent of wage and assets inequality in Britain in the mid 1990s. Analysis of the Family Resources Survey shows that women continue to have lower incomes than men even with their increased entry to the labour market, and have fewer chances to build up a safety net of savings in their working lives and a good income for their retirement. It would seem that in a future Britain where individuals will increasingly depend on private pensions rather than a state minimum, even if women continue to increase their participation levels, the poverty they face in old age will persist.

Children's socio-economic origins have a major impact on their socio-economic destinations. But what effect do they have on other kinds of destinations, such as family life? In this article we assess the extent and nature of the relationship between social class background and lone motherhood, using a combination of research methods. We analyse three large datasets and explore in detail qualitative information from 44 in-depth interviews. Our analysis shows that women from working class backgrounds are more likely to become lone mothers (especially never-married lone mothers) than women from middle class backgrounds. Moreover, the experience of lone motherhood is very different for women from working class backgrounds compared with other women.

The 'financialization of everyday life' is a concept widely recognized by academics as an increasingly fundamental way of understanding the impact of neoliberal ideologies and financial processes on individual identities, subjectivities and relationships with financial services. This article contributes to debates on the consumption of sub-prime credit and calls for a sophisticated analysis of this aspect of financialization to take into account the variegated use of financial services and use of credit by people on low and moderate incomes. Drawing on qualitative analysis of the 'lived experience' of financialization, based on rigorous in-depth interviews with 44 low/middle income borrowers in the United Kingdom the article concludes that: individuals are at risk of financial insecurity due to increasing variegation of credit markets, and; that the binaries of 'super inclusion'/'relic' financial ecologies fail to reflect the complexity and variegation of credit use in contemporary society as a result of financialization.

The distribution of economic resources in society is a central concern for social policy. But research in this area has primarily concentrated on the bottom of the economic distribution, namely 'the poor'. In this article, we argue that it is time for social policy to move away from a narrow focus on poverty to consider the broader issue of inequality between different groups in the economic distribution and, by implication, the position of better-off citizens. This raises a number of conceptual challenges due to the current lack of consideration of wealth and inequality at a political, theoretical or empirical level. The article discusses the challenges and concludes by outlining a possible research agenda. However, the underpinning argument is that social policy needs to develop a broader understanding of the economic distribution.