This book presents new translations of the earliest known studies in Social Policy. Juan-Luis Vives's De Subventione Pauperum (On the Relief of the Poor) is an

This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, a

A groundbreaking account of how the welfare state began with early nineteenth-century child labor laws, and how middle-class and elite reformers made it happen

"This ... new history tells the story of one [of] the greatest transformations in British intellectual, social and political life: the creation of the welfare s

Drawing on a variety of materials, including newspapers, legal briefs, political speeches, the art and literature of the time, and letters from thousands of ord