New Social Policy Approaches for Sharing Risk

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Income Related Loans are an arrangement in which finance is provided to groups in specific sometimes adverse, situations, conditional on the activity having public benefits, with some part of this support being repaid depending on future economic success. This project will extend principles for the application of a new and internationally innovative public policy, income related loans (IRL) to areas of social need. The principle application of IRL to date has been in higher education (HECS), and applications for some areas of economic and industry support have also been considered. It is the premise of this project that there are also important possible socially beneficial IRL applications. There are two separate aspects of the proposal. First, the project seeks to demonstrate that social investment of this IRL kind is also viable and suitable and can potentially assist with meeting better a range of social needs in a demographically ageing society-both by direct attention to support of the aged but also by looking at related demographics that might compensate for ageing eg female work force participation, disability work force participation, higher fertility and immigration. Second, extension of IRL to social areas requires understanding of sensitivities in public attitudes to the forms of social support and especially to the introduction of such novel alternatives. A survey approach to public attitudes in this field is therefore a key component of the project. In addition the development of costing methodologies suitable for demonstrating savings from the operation of such deferred payment systems in social areas is essential.