The hospice sector has expanded and diversified rapidly in recent years and has become associated with the provision of highly specialised, good quality care for the dying. However, as resources for health and social care are increasingly stretched, it will become necessary to demonstrate, rather than to assert, that the hospice sector provides superior care. This paper considers critically the methodology that has been used in the evaluation of the effectiveness of hospice care, focusing on the design of evaluations, what is measured, who measures it and how it has been measured in practice.

Up until very recently, the international debate on health inequality tended to disregard the issue of specifying equity objectives precisely. This was unfortunate, given the importance of normative analysis for understanding why people care about social justice in the field of health; the extent to which specific types of inequality are compatible with equity; how the concept should be measured; and how rational policies may be formulated and monitored. This article critically appraises six well established approaches to defining equity—egality, entitlement, the decent minimum, utilitarianism, Rawlsian maximin, and envy-free allocations—as well as two alternative formulations recently proposed by health economists—equity as choice and health maximisation. All of these are found wanting in some respect when applied to the health sector. It is argued that Sen's ‘capabilities’ concepts, strangely ignored by health services researchers in the past, could prove an effective framework within which to organise research and policy formulation in the area of health and health care inequality.

The principal aim of law centres is to service the claims of poor and low income people in the field of social welfare law. Their successes and limitations in realising this aim constitute the major part of this paper. Levels of demand, the satisfaction of unmet legal needs and the role played by law centres in the spectrum of advice services are important factors in assessing their mission. No assessment can be complete, however, without taking into account the internal problems faced by law centres—such as, funding, caseload levels, and rationing procedures. This paper argues that the formation of a national network of law centres would help to solve many of their operational difficulties and to position them more effectively within the spectrum of legal advice services.

In examining the sex of beneficiaries of income maintenance programmes, several country-specific studies suggest a pattern of segregation between women and men in access to types of benefit. Men are more likely to be recipients of social insurance benefits, whilst women often must rely on means-tested programmes, and frequently their claims to insurance benefits are via their husband. This conclusion is re-examined through a comparison of insurance and means-tested programmes in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The purpose is to determine, first, to what extent such a pattern of segregation emerges in the four countries and, second, what mechanisms operate to exclude or include women. The comparison reveals that the Swedish case deviates from the other three countries, and policy constructions inhibiting and promoting greater equality between women and men in access to social benefits are discussed. The results also have theoretical implications for dual welfare as an analytical framework and feminist thinking about the welfare state.