Ringen has advocated the use of both income and deprivation criteria in identifying those excluded from society due to lack of resources, a widely accepted definition of poverty. We illustrate with Irish data how this might be done, paying particular attention to how appropriate indicators of deprivation are to be selected. The results show that employing both income and deprivation criteria rather than income alone can make a substantial difference to both the extent and composition of measured poverty. This highlights the restrictive nature of poverty conceived in terms of exclusion rather than minimum rights to resources.

Responses from both voluntary organisations and statutory authorities to the community care legislation and the policy guidance stressed the importance of maintaining the concept of ‘partnership’ as local authorities move towards becoming ‘enabling authorities’. Using data from intensive observation and interviewing in two inner and two outer London Boroughs, this paper examines the nature of the redefined partnership and the implications of the emerging contract culture for voluntary organisations.

The paper examines the formulation and implementation of abortion politics in Israel. Liberalisation of abortion, triggered by the need to enable poor women to terminate unwanted pregnancies, enjoyed wide consensus. The highly controversial repeal of the social-cause clause, prompted by coalition bargaining, was aimed at encouraging fertility. Both policies failed to realise intentions of decision-makers. Liberalisation of abortion did not result in population control among the poor; restriction of abortion did not lead to increasing birth rates. The reasons for the unsuccessful impact are grounded in the hidden agenda, caused by the incompatibility between two policy goals: curbing birth rates among the poor and encouraging fertility among the Jewish population on the whole. The hidden agenda hindered the achievement of impact: population control policy was not followed up by family planning. Population growth policy was not followed up by economic incentives.

In Britain there has been a long tradition of research into associations between area of residence and health. Rarely has this involved investigating socio-economic or cultural features of areas that might influence health; usually studies use area level data, for example about specific pathogens or about levels of deprivation, as surrogates for individual level data, rather than being interested in the areas themselves. This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between area and health. It advocates directly studying features of the local social and physical environment which might promote or inhibit health, illustrating this approach with some findings from a study in the West of Scotland, and suggests that improvements in public health might be achieved by focusing on places as well as on people.