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社会学·国际顶刊

Journal of Social Policy

（《社会政策杂志》）

的最新目录与摘要

期刊简介

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL POLICY

About Journal

Journal of Social Policy carries high quality articles on all aspects of social policy in an international context. It places particular emphasis upon articles which seek to contribute to debates on the future direction of social policy, to present new empirical data, to advance theories, or to analyse issues in the making and implementation of social policies.

Journal metrics

影响因子（Impact Factor）：是指某期刊前两年发表的论文在该报告年份中被引用总次数除以该期刊在这两年内发表的论文总数，反映了期刊论文的平均被引用情况。相对来说，2.6的影响因子在社科领域处于较为不错的水平，说明该刊上发表的文章具备一定的质量，能够吸引其他学者的关注和引用，具有一定的学术传播力。

学科领域排名：Journal of Social Policy在94本社会工作（Social Work）类期刊中排第5，处于前5%左右的位置；在68本社会问题（Social Issues）类期刊中排第15，排名处于前22%左右；在90本公共管理（Public Administration）类期刊中排第25，处于前28%左右。这表明该期刊无论是在研究内容的深度、创新性，还是在业内认可度上，都处于领先地位，是相关领域学者关注和发表研究成果的重要平台。

Current issue

Journal of Social Policy 为季刊，最新一期（Volume 54, Issue 4, October 2025）共计19篇文章，详情如下。

原版目录

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL POLICY

原文摘要

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL POLICY

Articles

A dynamic perspective on profiling financial-aid eligibility: the case of South Africa universal basic income

Emma Whitelaw, Nicola Branson, Murray Leibbrandt

The sustainable funding of tertiary education is a subject of significant policy debate worldwide. In South Africa, the need to balance equitable access within a constrained fiscal environment has been a complex challenge. A legacy of racially segregated educational opportunities, together with student activism and protests, has shaped the political economy surrounding tertiary education funding. Policymakers continue to be faced with the challenge of funding students whose household income is too high to meet state financial aid eligibility, yet who struggle to afford tuition and accommodation expenses. In this context, exploring a policy instrument that differentiates students based on multidimensional socioeconomic need is critical. We motivate for a differentiated policy instrument that considers economic uncertainty of households as a dimension of socioeconomic need. A purpose of our paper is therefore to illustrate that income mobility can contribute to household vulnerability, and therefore to funding need. Household income mobility is estimated using a multivariate probit model that explicitly accounts for endogeneity of initial conditions, unobserved heterogeneity, and non-random panel attrition. We operationalise this model as a relevant empirical tool for analysing and understanding the implementation, expansion, and targeting of social policy more generally.

Housing affordability and poverty in Europe: on the deteriorating position of market renters regimes

Rod Hick, Marco Pomati, Mark Stephens

There are growing concerns about housing affordability throughout Europe. Recent studies by Housing Europe and the OECD have suggested that we are witnessing a generalised deterioration in housing affordability, while other studies point to worsening housing affordability for specific groups, such as renters or low-income households. The aim of this paper is to explore trends in, and incidences and determinants of, housing affordability in a comparative European context over the period 2010 to 2018. To do this we analyse data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey. We examine trends across different measures of housing affordability; examine its association with a variety of socio-economic characteristics and explore country-level differences in housing affordability problems. Our study finds that despite claims of worsening housing affordability, affordability measures show little sign of generalised deterioration over the period in question but that risks of affordability problems have become more concentrated on market renters during this period. At the country level, we find that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the at-risk-of-poverty rate are associated with housing affordability problems both between countries as well as within countries over time, while housing allowance coverage and rent regulation stringency are associated with affordability problems between countries.

Understanding the expansion of social control and helping professionals as unwilling agents of the state: the passing of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in the United States

Abigail Williams-Butler, Shari Cunningham, María Gandarilla Ocampo, Kate Golden Guzman, Alicia Mendez

It is widely known that those in the helping professions are mandated to report suspected incidences of child maltreatment. However, few are aware of the historical resistance to mandated reporting that helping professionals demonstrated before the passing of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 1974 and the associated federal mandates that compelled helping professionals to engage in mandated reporting, oftentimes against their will. By analysing historical policy documents through a grounded theory approach, the authors identified three themes that describe the rationale for the passage of CAPTA: (1) identifying national evidence of child abuse; (2) resistance to intrusion of the helping professional-client relationship; and (3) the necessity of immunity waivers for those who reported instances of child abuse and misdemeanor punishment for those who failed to report such instances. In light of conversations around abolishing or reforming child protective services, it is important to understand how the first federal child protective services policy in the United States originated and how these regulations embedded social control into the foundation of the helping professional-client relationship, thus turning helping professionals into unwilling agents of the state. Implications of mandated reporting, including introducing a penal aspect to the helping professional-client relationship, are also explored.

Overcoming hybridisation in global welfare regime classifications: lessons from a single case study

Zahid Mumtaz, Antonios Roumpakis, Mulyadi Sumarto

The hybridisation of welfare regimes is a critical issue in social policy literature due to the lack of a uniform dependent variable and the comparative, international scope of social policy analysis, and data availability. We argue that what is presented in the global welfare regime literature as an analytical problem of classification or transitioning could also, in fact, be treated as a methodological issue. Based on this, we aim to establish a criterion for determining the membership of a welfare regime by capturing the presence of hybridisation of welfare regimes in a given country at a particular time. We present a novel methodological approach based on multistage sampling to capture the hybridisation of distinct welfare regimes and determine the most populous cluster in Pakistan. Establishing criteria for capturing and determining welfare regime membership can improve the understanding of welfare regime dynamics and factors that contribute to hybridisation. Ultimately, this knowledge can inform policy decisions and contribute to the development of more effective welfare systems for diverse populations.

An intersectional feminist analysis of compulsory income management in Australia

Zoe Staines, Greg Marston, Michelle Peterie, Shelley Bielefeld, Philip Mendes, Steven Roche

Globally, women experience poverty at disproportionate rates to men, with the situation being worse for Indigenous women and women of colour. Social security systems are one avenue for income redistribution that can alleviate poverty. However, such systems are themselves embedded within and produced by unequal social relations, meaning they can also serve to perpetuate and exacerbate social inequalities. This is exemplified under neoliberal welfare reforms, which have disproportionate negative impacts for women across the world (e.g. increased poverty and stigma, reduced health/wellbeing, and more). Again, this is particularly the case for Indigenous women and women of colour.

In this article, we offer an intersectional feminist analysis of an intensive form of neoliberal welfare conditionality, Australia’s ‘compulsory income management’ program (CIM). CIM quarantines social security incomes onto cashless bank cards to restrict expenditure to ‘approved’ items. Drawing on interviews and surveys with 170 individuals who have personally experienced CIM, we show that it has myriad negative impacts that are especially borne by (Indigenous) women. These are not, we argue, unintended policy impacts, but are instead symptomatic of the gendered and racialised violence that is woven into patriarchal capitalism more broadly. Thus, the experience of CIM holds lessons for welfare states internationally.

Who deserves economic relief? Examining Twitter/X debates about Covid-19 economic relief for small businesses and the self-employed in Germany

Till Hilmar

The economic shock of the Covid-19 crisis has disproportionately impacted small businesses and the self-employed. Around the globe, their survival during the pandemic often relied heavily on government assistance. This article explores how economic relief to business is understood through the lens of deservingness in the public. It examines the case of Germany, where the government has responded to the pandemic by implementing an extensive support programme. Notably, in this context, the self-employed are typically outsiders to the state insurance system. Combining computational social science methods and a qualitative analysis, the article focuses on the debate about direct subsidies on the social media platform Twitter/X between March 2020 and June 2021. It traces variation in the patterns of claim making in what is a rich debate about pandemic state support, finding that this discourse is characterised by the concern that economic relief threatens to blur existing boundaries of worth in society. The reciprocity principle of deservingness theory is pivotal in asserting business identities in times of crisis, yet it also reveals a fundamentally ambiguous relationship with the principle of need. Additionally, the claim of justice-as-redress, as a novel dimension of reciprocity, surfaces as an important theme in this debate.

Hope in a paranoid place? Critique, utopianism and prefigurative policy reform

Rebecca Hewer, Ben Collier

We are living through cruel and frightening times. How should a progressive policy studies respond? Critique undoubtedly plays a role: the task of exposing the structural conditions, political interests and power asymmetries that lie beneath the ‘prosaic surface’ of policy is an urgent one. But are these primarily deconstructive efforts enough? Can they lead us out of this quagmire, alone? In this article, we argue that something additional – something more generative and hopeful – is also required. In response, we introduce ‘critical utopian policy analysis’ (CUPA) a methodological elaboration of critical policy analysis (CPA) designed to support its use in both deconstructive and reconstructive policy efforts. This approach builds on the theoretical offerings of critical policy analysis, utopianism and prefiguration, to posit a methodological embrace of critique, imagination, enactment and play. It seeks to mobilise a complex nexus of affect – including heartbreak and hope – to motivate and support a range of intellectual undertakings and emancipatory politics.

Performance and trust in child protection systems: a comparative analysis of England and Norway

Bilal Hassan

Research on the relationship between performance and trust is commonplace in social sciences, yet trust in child protection systems (CPS) remains an emerging area of study. This research delves into how three dimensions of performance – distributive justice, procedural fairness, and functional effectiveness – affect trust in CPS in England and Norway, drawing insights from organisational and social psychology literature. A cross-sectional survey collected data from 981 individuals in England and 1,140 in Norway. Results suggest that procedural fairness and the competences indicator of functional effectiveness significantly and positively impact trust in CPS in both countries. Resources significantly influence trust in Norway’s CPS, while distributive justice has no impact on trust in either country’s CPS. These findings hold theoretical and practical implications for trust in CPS.

Policy feedback and income targeting in the welfare state

Tijs Laenen, Sarah Marchal, Wim Van Lancker

In light of ongoing debates about income targeting in the welfare state, this article explores how the design and outcomes of income targeting policies are related to popular targeting preferences. Based on the unique combination of fine-grained opinion and policy indicators in a multilevel analysis, the results show that targeting preferences are indeed empirically related to targeting policies. However, whether these preferences are affected more by the de jure targeting design or the de facto targeting outcome seems to vary between two very different policy domains. In the case of unemployment benefits, the results suggest positive policy feedback: support for high-income targeting increases when unemployment benefits are designed to benefit those with previously higher incomes. For income taxation, by contrast, the results suggest negative policy feedback. In that case, it is not so much the de jure design but rather the de facto outcome that matters: the more taxes effectively work to the advantage of higher-income earners, the less support there is for a tax that levies the same amount on everyone, regardless of income.

Beyond individual responsibility – towards a relational understanding of financial resilience through participatory research and design

Anne Angsten Clark, Sara Davies, Richard Owen, Keir Williams

This paper contributes to an increasingly critical assessment of a policy framing of ‘financial resilience’ that focuses on individual responsibility and financial capability. Using a participatory research and design process, we construct a ground-up understanding of financial resilience that acknowledges not only an individual’s actions, but the contextual environment in which they are situated, and how those relate to one another. We inductively identify four inter-connected dimensions of relational financial resilience: infrastructure (housing, health, and childcare), financial and economic factors (income, expenses, and financial services and strategies), social factors (motivation and community and family), and the institutional environment (policy and local community groups, support and advice services). Consequently, we recommend that social policies conceptualise financial resilience in relational terms, as a cross-cutting policy priority, rather than being solely a facet of individual financial capability.

Embedded and exterior practices of cross-sector co-production: the impact of fields

Lars Skov Henriksen, Ane Grubb, Morten Frederiksen

Cross-sector co-production involving voluntary organisations in the production and delivery of social services has been adopted across many welfare states. Economic and demographic changes have led to increased involvement of volunteer initiatives in different welfare policy fields. How different field properties enable, constrain, and shape co-production practices remains, however, under researched. In this article, we address this shortcoming in a comparative case design exploring the practices of co-production within the two fields of elderly services and refugee services. We develop a conceptual framework and demonstrate that differential distribution of resources leads to diverging outcomes and perspectives for co-production. Based on a two-year in-depth study of one large Danish municipality, we find two forms of co-production practices, which reflect different field conditions. In the field of elderly services, co-production takes the form of ‘embedded’ practices, and in the field of refugee services co-production takes the form of ‘exterior’ practices. We demonstrate that each of these co-production forms entail ambiguous outcomes and antagonistic positions for voluntary and public sector actors, depending on the policy field.

Fostering societal participation of marginalised people in street-outreach services in the Netherlands

Evelien Rauwerdink-Nijland, Linda van den Dries, Judith Metz, Arnoud Verhoeff, Judith Wolf

Marginalisation is a multilevel phenomenon in society depriving people from essential rights, resources, and opportunities. Street-outreach services in the Netherlands, like social street work (SSW), support these marginalised people in fostering their participation in society as an answer to their marginalised position in society. We followed 927 clients in SSW over an eight-month period. Clients filled in a questionnaire at three timepoints. We examined whether clients’ perceived belongingness, self-esteem, strengths, and informal support (outcome measures) were associated with the working relationship, over time. Results showed the establishment of a working relationship with clients at all three timepoints. An evolving working relationship was associated with an increase in clients’ perceived belongingness, self-esteem, strengths, and informal support over time. This study showed the ability of workers to establish a working relationship with clients in their living environment and underscored the necessity of establishing a working relationship in street-outreach services to foster clients’ participation in society. This study encourages policymakers to reflect on current street-outreach services, to deviate from demanding short-term and measurable results from professionals’ efforts, and to opt for a better fit between performance and financing conditions and daily practices of street-outreach services.

Systems thinking for better social policy: a case study in financial wellbeing

Jeremiah Thomas Brown, Jack Noone, Fanny Salignac

Social problems are becoming increasingly complex. Policymakers, thus, cannot solve these issues with a single policy instrument. For example, while decades of research have examined the individual factors that influence financial stress, less is known about how organisations, social structures, policies, social norms, and large-scale events interact to affect one’s financial wellbeing. Using a systems approach as the basis of our conceptualisation, we put forward a theoretical model to help policymakers and practitioners to address the root causes of such complex issues. We argue that extant literature does not adequately conceptualise the complex relationships between the micro, meso, and macro-level drivers of financial wellbeing. As a result, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners are under-resourced when it comes to designing interventions to improve individuals’ financial situations. We use the examples of affordable housing and social security policy to highlight the utility of a systems approach. In doing so we contribute to ongoing debates by putting forward a model of financial wellbeing in the context of Western countries (specifically Australia) that can better incorporate the moderating, mediating, and reciprocal relationships between financial wellbeing and its drivers.

The impact of health impairments on employment entry and the quality of employment among basic income support recipients in Germany

Cordula Zabel

Policies for recipients of basic income support for jobseekers in Germany focus on activation and quick labour market integration. Yet, the majority of benefit recipients report severe health impairments. Against this background, the article investigates implications of health impairments for benefit recipients’ jobcentre relationship and employment opportunities. The analyses show that 63 per cent of non-employed benefit recipients report health restrictions on their employment capabilities, 51 per cent report severe health impairments, and 25 per cent that they cannot work at all. The most frequent types of health impairments are musculoskeletal and mental health impairments. Health impairments significantly reduce entry rates into socially insured employment, but do not seem to inhibit taking up uninsured minijobs. Counselling frequency increases job entry rates for benefit recipients without health impairments in the short-term. For those with health impairments, no short-term effects are found over a one-year follow-up period. Policy responses could include a more explicit acknowledgement of health impairments as a central issue for benefit recipients. Greater investments in rehabilitation and subsidised employment could be part of a strategy to improve opportunities for benefit recipients with health impairments to find better-quality (part-time) employment instead of uninsured minijobs. The analyses are based on linked longitudinal PASS survey and administrative data.

‘Unprecedented injustice’: Digitalisation and the perceived accessibility of childcare benefits

Bryn Hummel, Mara A. Yerkes, Michèlle Bal

The Netherlands recently experienced a crisis in childcare benefits, leading to ‘unprecedented injustice’ for many parents falsely accused of defrauding the childcare benefit system. This crisis highlights multiple barriers in parents’ ability to access childcare already evident prior to the crisis, including the far-reaching digitalisation of social policies and childcare benefits in particular. Digitalisation can make parents feel childcare services are less accessible, thereby creating or exacerbating existing inequalities in childcare use. Parents may also lack the skills needed to navigate complex application procedures, which can affect their perceived access to childcare benefits, particularly in market-led systems with greater reliance on government benefits to cover the high costs of childcare. Extending recent research on childcare capabilities, we investigate the extent to which digital and functional literacy affect parents’ perceived access to childcare benefits in the Netherlands. The results from our exploratory quantitative analysis provide a starting point for understanding the understudied relationships between digitalisation, parents’ abilities to navigate complex childcare or other policy systems, and their (perceived) ability to access childcare benefits. We use these findings to develop multiple future research recommendations in the childcare policy literature.

Making the most of language acquisition of Syrian asylum permit holders in the Netherlands: the role of policy factors examined

Linda Bakker, Jaco Dagevos, Maja Djundeva

In this article, we examine the relationship between important types of policies for asylum permit holders in the Netherlands and the improvement in their command of Dutch. As far as asylum policy is concerned, we find that participation in activities in the asylum seekers reception centre – and in particular, following Dutch language classes – contribute to an improvement in Syrian asylum permit holders’ command of Dutch. On the other hand, a prolonged period of stay and frequent relocations between reception centres are not favourable. Asylum permit holders who have successfully completed the civic integration programme have a better command of the language than asylum permit holders who are still undergoing the programme. An important finding is that there seems to be a sort of double deficit in the area of civic integration: not only do the elderly and lower educated make less progress in learning Dutch, but they are also the ones more likely to receive a dispensation from the civic integration requirement, which places them at a further disadvantage. Third, we find that early participation in the labour market or as a volunteer is also beneficial for language proficiency.

Delivering ‘50 PLUS Choices’ in the UK: how compatible are ‘fuller working lives’ with an increasing reliance on informal carers to deliver social care?

Maria Evandrou, Jane Falkingham, Min Qin, Athina Vlachantoni

The past decade has been marked by cuts in public funding of adult social care alongside an increased policy focus within the UK on extending working lives through ‘50 PLUS Choices’. This study uses the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009/10–2018/19) to examine the relationship between informal care provision and labour market participation. The analysis focusses on mid-life, a period of life course characterised by both the uptake of informal care provision responsibilities and withdrawal from the labour market. Across the observation period, employment increased amongst both mid-life carers and non-carers, but the gap widened – with carers being much less likely to be employed. Discrete-time survival models assess the effect of caregiving on the likelihood of changing from full-time to part-time work or leaving work altogether. A range of indicators of caregiving, including care intensity, type of care provided and relationship to the person cared for, are all associated with reduced employment. The analysis supports the argument that policies promoting higher labour force participation amongst older workers are incompatible with cuts in funding for adult social care; to realise ‘50 PLUS Choices’, older working carers need to be better supported in juggling the competing demands of care and work.

New shades of conflict? Theorising the multi-dimensional politics of eco-social policies

Torben Fischer, Giovanni Amerigo Giuliani

This article presents a novel framework for analysing the politics of eco-social policies, focusing on the political conflicts surrounding this third generation of social risks. We distinguish two key dimensions of conflict: an ideational approach dimension, which focuses on conflicts among political actors over the possible synergies and trade-offs between social and ecological goals and their potential integration through eco-social policies, and a design dimension with several sub-dimensions related to the formulation and implementation of eco-social policies. To illustrate the merit of this analytical framework, we apply it to the analysis of party manifestos for the 2021 German federal election. Our findings reveal a striking divergence in the first dimension: While most parties emphasise the synergy potential of eco-social policies, albeit to varying degrees, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) stands out by opposing this narrative. The second dimension largely reflects established welfare positions, with centre-left and left-wing parties advocating state involvement and social consumption (the Social Democratic Party of Germany [SPD], the Greens, and The Left) and selective/needs-oriented measures (SPD and The Left) to a greater extent than centre-right parties (Christian Democratic Union of Germany [CDU]/Christian Social Union in Bavaria [CSU] and Free Democratic Party [FDP]). Furthermore, pro-growth approaches dominate, but there are signs that positions on degrowth policies may emerge as a significant conflict line in the future. Our analysis shows that eco-social policy conflicts are multidimensional, partly reshaping the political landscape around welfare policies, and are about not only how eco-social policies should be designed but whether they can and should be pursued at all.

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《中国社会学学刊》（The Journal of Chinese Sociology）于2014年10月由中国社会科学院社会学研究所创办。作为中国大陆第一本英文社会学学术期刊，JCS致力于为中国社会学者与国外同行的学术交流和合作打造国际一流的学术平台。JCS由全球最大科技期刊出版集团施普林格·自然(Springer Nature)出版发行，由国内外顶尖社会学家组成强大编委会队伍，采用双向匿名评审方式和“开放获取”(open access)出版模式。JCS已于2021年5月被ESCI收录。2022年，JCS的CiteScore分值为2.0（Q2），在社科类别的262种期刊中排名第94位，位列同类期刊前36%。2025年JCS最新影响因子1.3，位列社会学领域期刊全球前53%（Q3）。

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