This article reports on comparative research into the living standards of unemployed couples claiming Income Support, couples claiming in-work benefits and couples in receipt of a male median wage. The data reveal high levels of debt and credit dependence across the whole sample, which have a particularly damaging impact on the daily consumption patterns of the unemployed group. The problems this raises for comparative judgements about living standards are discussed, most notably the need for a longitudinal perspective in both the analysis of financial circumstances and the interpretation of data on current standards of living.

This article explores some of the main reasons why feminist mobilisation around the issue of child daycare in Britain has been so limited and its impact so modest. It describes this mobilisation, comparing it with experience in other countries and with mobilisation on other issues. It suggests that the modest achievement to date is largely attributable to factors other than the lack of feminist pressure. Indeed feminist reservations were partly a realistic response to these external constraints. But they were also a consequence of the particular character of second wave feminism in Britain and of the questions posed by the issue of childcare for feminists. These questions included the nature and proper role of the state, motherhood, the value of paid employment for women, social class and the tension between short and long-term strategies for social change.

The article develops a case study of the family and work history of an interviewee which is used to illustrate the context in which family arrangements for work, care and support develop. The study uses Finch and Mason's (1993) focus on human agency to develop a ‘family responsibilities account’, and then goes on to explore three aspects of the social structural context in which the life has been lived. These are developed from Connell's analysis (1987) of gender relations: constraints associated with the division of labour, with issues of power and with emotional and personal life (cathexis).

A detailed account of the life in question is given, and this is reanalysed using the four approaches indicated. The result is an overall account which emphasises the complexity of social life and of human decision-making, even at the apparently mundane level of choices about family life, paid employment, domestic work and the care and support of kin. The extent to which constraining factors interweave with individual agency is demonstrated, and the significance of the analysis for policymakers is noted: each change in arrangements for work and care in a life affects others, and policy must be made in an awareness of the complexity of its unintended effects as well as of its objectives.

A number of circumstances have combined in the reform era in China to put women at a more disadvantageous position now than at any other time since 1949. Some of them reflect age-old prejudices, others are the result of the economic reforms, but the two join in a synthesis to threaten women's improved status. Health factors that have particularly impinged on women include: the one-child policy and the skewed birth ratio in favour of boys that this has led to; very clear problems in the area of mental health, including a suicide rate which is much higher for women than for men; kidnapping; and life-threatening exploitation in the new special economic zones. The government's desire to control women's fertility, however, has led to a marked improvement and increase in maternity and childcare health services in the last ten years. The central government has lost power to the provinces and is no longer able to take decisive action to protect women from the effects of discrimination.

This comment examines proposals set out in this journal (Cuvillier, 1993) for taxing the imputed incomes of housewives in order to remove favourable treatment by the tax and benefit system which is an incentive to their remaining in the home. It briefly outlines Cuvillier's thesis and proposals and offers a critical assessment of the reforms she recommends. It finds that though the analysis of the problem is lucid and persuasive, the proposals are impracticable, unfair and largely irrelevant. It concludes that the distortions which affect women's choices about working outside the home are not implicit tax and benefit subsidies but obstacles: lack of affordable childcare and poverty traps in the tax and benefits systems.