Will You Still Need Me,Will You Still Feed Me?—Paying for Care in Old Age

A major issue for social policy in the twenty-first century will be providing good-quality support and care for older people. However, recent debate about this has been driven more by ideology than by evidence. This paper examines the socio-economic, demographic and policy changes that are influencing the debate, and outlines findings from current research on attitudes towards financial planning for care in old age. This shows that the majority of people feel that the state should provide or pay for care for older people, either through a means-tested system or one which provides some basic level of protection which people can choose to enhance through their own means. However, only a minority would be willing to pay themselves for this, either directly through increased taxation or indirectly through reduced prospects of inheritance of housing capital. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.     

Sensitivity to “Bad Genes” and the Anomalous Face Overgeneralization Effect: Cue Validity, Cue Utilization, and Accuracy in Judging Intelligence and Health

The bad genes and anomalous face overgeneralization accounts of facial preferences were tested by examining cue validity, cue utilization, and accuracy in judging health and intelligence from faces in the upper and lower halves of the distributions of attractiveness and its components: averageness, symmetry, and masculinity. Consistent with the bad genes hypothesis, facial attractiveness, averageness, symmetry, and male face masculinity each provided valid cues to intelligence and/or health for faces in the lower but not the upper halves of the distributions of these facial qualities. Consistent with the anomalous face overgeneralization hypothesis, attractiveness and its components were utilized as cues not only for faces in the lower halves of the distributions, but also for those in the upper halves. Intelligence and health were judged accurately for faces in the lower but not the upper half of the attractiveness distribution, and attractiveness mediated this accuracy at all ages except adolescence. Since adolescence is the prime mating age, the latter finding raises questions about the utility of attractiveness as an evolved mechanism to ensure the selection of high quality mates.     

Confessions of a Jobbing Researcher

The relationship between research and policy making is complex and not always direct. This paper describes disability-related research for policy makers which is carried out at the Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of York. A distinction between the ways in which research is formed and the ways in which it is informed is made. The informing of research influences how it is carried out; the research questions themselves, the choice of design and methods, the form of analysis, and the pattern of dissemination. The seminar series has helped SPRU reappraise its disability-related research. Disabled people must be able to influence the framing and elaboration of research questions more directly; there must be an increased commitment to employing and to training disabled researchers; dissemination must be wider; 'crucial gateways' to policy makers and practitioners have to be identified; and the debate on informal care must be moved further on.