CASE STUDY | UK Government

Question 1

Methods used to tackle social and economic inequalities

Answer 1

Taxation
Subsidies
Planning
Law
Education

Question 2

Taxation

Answer 2

• Income tax used by governments to redistribute wealth from more prosperous to less prosperous groups
• Most governments have progressive tax systems were the more wealthy pay a larger proportion of their incomes in tax
• Essential items such as food may be exempt from tax, which benefits poorer groups that spend a larger percentage of their income on food

Question 3

Subsidies

Answer 3

• Governments try to reduce inequality by giving subsidies to poorer groups
• Children in poor families may get free school meals, clothing allowances and help with university fees
• Pensioners may get subsidies for fuel and transport
• Other subsidies include free child care for single parents
• Low wage earners, unemployed workers and those with long term disability are entitled to benefits

Question 4

Planning

Answer 4

• Governments, charities and housing agencies often give priority to upgrading housing and services in the poorest areas
• At a local scale, this happens in informal slum settlements in LIDCs as well as in the rundown inner city locations in ACs
• Planning is often organised geographically and is targeted at the most deprived areas which var in scale from neighbourhoods to entire regions

Question 5

Law

Answer 5

• Legislation exists in most ACs which outlaws discrimination on racial, ethnic, gender and age criteria and aims to give equal opportunities to all groups
• Often in ACs the poorest groups of workers are protected by minimum-wage legislation

Question 6

Education

Answer 6

• Governments often provide funding for training and upgrading skills in order to raise skill levels and qualifications, improve employment prospects and boost economic growth
• Education programmes designed to improve personal health (eg. diet, obesity, smoking) are often targeted at the poorer groups in society

Question 7

What was the distribution of government spending like in 2016?

Answer 7

20% pensions
18% health
15% welfare
12% education
Remainder on transport, defence, etc

Question 8

Pensions

Answer 8

• Spending on pensions in UK has almost doubled in past dozen years, largely reflects increasing life expectancy and an ageing of the population, as a result the age at which people can draw their state pension is rising
• Some of the poorest members of society are those relying entirely on the state pension
• There tends to be a disproportionate number of these people living in inner cities and this contributes to high levels of multiple deprivation in these areas
• It is important though to distinguish between this group and pensions who are relatively wealthy, large numbers of people now retiring have occupational pensions which provide a higher income than does the state pension, many of these retirees also own their homes outright and have benefitted from house price inflation

Question 9

Healthcare

Answer 9

• Health care in may ACs is provided by a combination of government and private organisations - in the UK the NHS is ‘free at the point of delivery’, people pay for the NHS through the taxation system
• However, the provision of health services varies, eg. inner cities and remote rural areas are short of GPs and other health care workers whereas affluent suburban areas are well served
• Language and cultural barriers and the role and status of women have been obstacles to recently arrived migrants accessing health care services
• Within some groups, such as Somali and Soutb Asian, fears about immunisation and a lack of resistance to childhood diseases have meant that children are unprotected against common diseases such as measles and whooping cough
• Literature is produced in ethnic minorities languages to inform parnts of the benefits of immunisation and as literacy has improved and more assimilation has taken place, overall health care has improved
• There is a hierarchy in the provision of health care from the GP surgery through to specialist units treating rare diseases in large teaching hospitals
• As medical care has become more technological, it has become concentrated in fewer but larger facilities, meanwhile in rural areas and many small towns, local cottage hospitals have closed
• For lower income families and the elderly with lower levels of personal mobility, access to health services in these areas can be a problem

Question 10

Rural services

Answer 10

• For many decades a cornerstone of rural planning in the UK has been to support rural areas through the key settlement policy
• Services such as education and healthcare, employment and housing have been concentrated in large villages and small towns, these places act as hubs for people living in surrounding smaller settlements
• The idea behind this policy was that if a service is supported by a critical mass of people or threshold, then it would be sustainable
• Howe,r as improvements in personal mobility have taken place many rural residents no longer rely exclusively on their nearest key settlements
• They often combine trips for employment and shopping, and access a range of destinations such as as the supermarkets and retail parks on the outskirts of urban places, this behaviour has been helped by the extended opening hours, the availability of home delivery services by food retailers also provides other options