IN BRIEF
STUDENTS ABROAD Residence abroad is a key experience for university students studying languages and most benefit from it greatly. But students’ language development during residence abroad is variable. A new study aims to explore the factors influencing this variability and findings will provide practical guidance for students and their teachers on how to improve advanced language learning during students’ year abroad. ESRC grant number RES-062-23-2996
WORKING LIFE SURVEY A new integrated survey of the skills and employment experiences of working life in Britain in 2012 will become a key and distinctive resource for research on contemporary working life. The Skills and Employment Survey (SES) will provide continuity with previous ESRC-funded surveys, set a benchmark for future research and allow international comparisons. ESRC grant number RES-241-25-0001
IMPRISONMENT COSTS Drawing on nearly 100 years of data on prisons, a new study asks what lessons can be learned for current debates about sentencing offenders and managing the prison population. Researchers will explore whether short sentences contributed to repeat offending, whether early release schemes accelerated or inhibited recidivism, and the financial costs of imprisonment to the country and the human costs to those imprisoned. ESRC grant number RES-062-23-3102
Wage top-up schemes may devalue work
AS THE GLOBAL economic crisis continues, global wage inequalities have become even starker. While the government is keen to reduce these inequalities through tax credit schemes, a new study suggests that such schemes may well be corrosive to those they are aiming to help. Researchers investigated the
perceptions of low-paid workers who had been receiving the UK government’s Working Tax Credit (WTC). “The WTC is the latest version of a means-tested state benefit or ‘credit’ that tops up the wages of low paid workers,” explains researcher Professor Hartley Dean. WTC was introduced by the
New Labour government in 2003, but will be replaced by the Coalition government’s new Universal Credit scheme, which will also be used to top-up low wages. “The assumption of policymakers – from all three main parties – is that using public funds to subsidise low wages is a way to ‘make work pay’ and give people an incentive to take low-paid work,” says Professor Dean. “In this study, we explored how 52 WTC recipients felt about having their wages topped up in this way.” Findings reveal clear support for
the WTC, but confusion as to the purposes of the scheme. “Although the WTC scheme was generally viewed positively and most of the people
4 SOCIETY NOW SUMMER 2011 SPRING 2012
we talked to were grateful for the additional income, there were still some important undercurrents of resentment,” says Professor Dean. “WTC does not of itself
compensate for the injustices or adverse effects of precarious and inadequately paid work. Paradoxically, hardly any of the people who took part in this research explicitly recognised that schemes like WTC are in effect a subsidy to low-paying employers, but a lot of them felt devalued at work or locked into menial jobs.” Wage top-up schemes may not
always be conducive to sustaining a morally meaningful work ethic among those workers who are systematically confined to the low-paid periphery of a polarised labour market, the study concludes. Professor Dean adds: “It is worth remembering that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that everyone has the right to work that is freely chosen and subject to just and favourable conditions. Whether wage top- up schemes serve to mitigate or perpetuate the violation of that right is a moot point.” n
i
Contact Professor Hartley Dean, London School of Economics and Political Science Email
h.dean@
lse.ac.uk Telephone 020 7955 6184 ESRC Grant Number RES-062-23-1833
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32