| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Discovering Child Poverty: The Creation of a Policy Agenda from 1800 to the Present. By Lucinda Platt (Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, 2005. vi plus 143 pp. $23.95).

In his 1999 lecture at Oxford University, "Beveridge Revisited: A Welfare State for the 21st Century," Tony Blair announced his government's intention to eradicate child poverty by 2020. According to Lucinda Platt, this agenda crowned a development at least 200 years in the making. Her goal in this book is to trace that process from one particular perspective, the relationship between social research and policy. As she ably argues, that connection defies easy categorization. Research informs policy, but it does so only when it can "find its place within prevailing (although obviously not static) ideas and beliefs." (p. 121) At the same time, policy shapes the parameters of social research, not only raising issues of concern, but also delineating the very subject of inquiry. In this instance, laws restricting child labor and instituting compulsory education helped to define the child while offering new venues for their study, the school. In the end, then, "one message that comes over from this survey of poverty studies and policy change is that there exists an oblique relationship between the two." (p. 118) Beyond that, Platt is hesitant to venture. There is no attempt here to follow a traditional sociological path at model-building. Nor, despite occasional use of the term "discourse", does Platt delve into the murky waters of theory. This book offers an analysis of the process by which child poverty rose to the fore of British welfare policy, as well as the myriad factors that shaped that progression. Wider implications are left for the reader to determine.

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