3.3 Beveridge and the move towards a ‘species of universalism’ The 1942 Beveridge Report laid the foundations for the 1946 National Insurance Act and the creation of the welfare state. This represented a central plank of the post Second World War reconstruction. State pensions were viewed as offering a basic minimum income to old people, thereby constituting them as part of the nation's social citizenry. However, cultural and economic imperatives privileging the needs of the young over those of the old meant older people's citizenship rights were in real
References Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 3.6 Population policy The period of fertility decline in Britain coincided with a time when anxieties about population control came to dominate a wide range of debates about social policy. These debates originated in two different theories of population: Malthusian ideas about overpopulation and eugenics – the ‘science’ of selective breeding. An Essay on the Principle of Population by Reverend Thomas Malthus, published in 1798, argued that populations would inevitably increase more rapidl 3.4 Sexuality Just as ‘normal’ parenthood was seen as outside the realm of social policy (although framed and supported by it), sexual practices within marriage were widely seen as an essentially private matter. Foucault (1984) argued that while sexualities were very actively shaped by the Victorians through a range of discourses, particularly those of professional, medical and scientific interests, within marriage it was increasingly an area of silence. Up to the eighteenth century matrimonial relatio 3.3 Parenthood The deeply embedded inequalities of marriage were also prevalent in parenthood, reflecting the key role of gender in structuring the inequalities found in both. Under common law fathers were given complete control over their children, while mothers had no rights of custody, care or access if the marriage broke down, or even if the husband died. A man could be adulterous or fail to provide for his family without depriving him of his rights. The Poor Laws provided the only legal requirement on 2 Explaining fertility decline from a feminist perspective Feminist theory underpins one of the most influential historiographies of fertility decline and it allows us to foreground gender as a dominant feature in questions of heterosexuality and parenthood. This is not to suggest that divisions of class, ‘race’, (dis)ability and generation are unimportant in this historical phenomenon, and any full understanding of fertility decline would be incomplete without including them. But in this course the main focus will be on gender and these other so 1.5 The personal The close relationship between parenthood and sexuality illustrates the importance of the personal in social policy in a number of ways. First, it shows that the growing interest in procreation, sexuality and parenthood by policy makers was never a one-way process whereby policy was simply imposed on people. Rather, individuals who set new terms for their experience of parenthood through changes in procreative sexuality were also helping to shape the policy formations within which they found 1.4 Sexuality, parenthood and social policy Just as procreative sexuality within marriage has rarely been the focus of historical research, as a social phenomenon it has also been viewed as inherently unproblematic in terms of social policy. Unlike today, there was very little explicit legislation or public policy that directly addressed the ‘private’ sphere of marriage and family during the fertility decline. However, there were a number of broad social policy formations that made assumptions and reinforced dominant messages about 1.1 Declining fertility In Britain, fertility decline occurred roughly between 1860 and 1930 – a span which includes the middle and end of the Victorian period (1860–1900), the Edwardian period (1900–1914), the First World War (1914–1918) and the 1920s. We will focus on the British experience, although a similar phenomenon has been noted in many other parts of the world. Fertility decline, also known as the demographic transition, is characterised by a shift from a ‘traditional’ norm of large families an Introduction Sexuality and parenthood encompass some of the most ordinary and yet most profound experiences that life has to offer. Until recently these two domains were intricately linked, and the idea that it is possible and desirable to have sex solely for pleasure without risk of pregnancy or having children is a relatively new one. This split between sexuality and parenthood has come about through a myriad of interlinking social changes, including shifting social relations and attitudes to sexuality, Acknowledgements The material below is contained in chapter 3 of Economics and Economic Change Microeconomics (2006) (eds) Graham Dawson, Maureen Mackintosh and Paul Anand, which is published by Pearson Education Limited in association with The Open University. Copyright © The Open University. The material acknowledged below is Proprietary, used under licence and not subject to Creative Commons Licence (see Author(s): 6 Questions for review and discussion Complete the following sentences by selecting the correct word or phrase from the list below to fill in the spaces: 5 Conclusion The idea of the double whammy brings together the two driving forces behind changes in industrial structure, with which this course opened and now closes. The use of a new technology causes a decline in the costs of production, which in turn encourages a rapid take-up by consumers of products embodying the new technology. This course has explored the factors affecting consumer demand. While the price of the product was found to be of crucial importance, socio-economic influences such as cultu 4.3.1 Knowledge and learning in the industry life cycle In Section 3 we described technology as ‘given’ to firms. Now let us reflect on that idea. We can think of technology as consisting of bodies of knowledge necessary to produce artefacts. An appreciation of the importance of knowledge to economic activity is not new, for it was recognised by the eminent eco 5 Conclusion This chapter has enabled you to think about the essential role of technological change in determining economy-wide growth and the growth of firms and industries. We have seen that many issues surrounding the new economy are really issues around the dynamics of technological change: rapid increases in productivity, the emergence of many small firms, new products and new processes, and so on. The main lesson of the course has been to provide a historical perspective to the introduction of new t 4.5 Technological change In both industries the fall in prices was driven by radical changes in the production of the products. How might we investigate the technological changes and the changes in quality that occurred in both industries simultaneously with the drastic fall in prices? There are various methods used by economists to measure technological change. Some methods focus on the ‘inputs’ into the innovation process, such as the spending on research and development by firms. But this is not ideal as it do 4.4 Prices and industrial change Many of the new entrants entered by introducing a new variation of the product. In fact, the early period in both industries was characterised by much technological change in the form of product innovation. Once a product standard emerged, product and process innovations around that standard led to a drastic fall in the product price in both industries. We will now look at some of the indicators of this turbulence in technology and prices. How can we look at price changes over time in i Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: identify the value and best way of note taking.
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