Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets

Research into minimum income standards and reference budgets around the world is compared in this illuminating collection from leading academics in the field.

From countries with long established research traditions to places where it is relatively new, contributors set out the different aims and objectives of investigations into the minimum needs and requirements of populations, and the historical contexts, theoretical frameworks and methodological issues that lie behind each approach.

For policymakers, practitioners and social policy and poverty academics, this essential review of learnings to date and future prospects for research is all the more relevant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, testing health and social protection systems around the globe.

Dr. Malcolm Torry is Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and an honorary research fellow in the Social Policy Department at the LSE.

EBM JPSJ Professor Peter Saunders Social Policy Research Centre University of New South Wales Sydney 2052 Australia

Jonathan Bradshaw CBE, FBA is Professor of Social Policy at the University of York. In addition to research into family policy, in recent years his research has focused on international comparisons of child poverty, child benefit packages and child well-being. He is a member of the Board of the International Society for Child Indicators and of the Foundation for International Studies in Social Security.

Christopher Deeming is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde, with research interests in the field of Comparative and Global Social Policy. His latest works with Policy Press are Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets: International and Comparative Policy Perspectives (2020) and Reframing Global Social Policy: Social Investment for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (2019).