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Although social security is one of the central institutions of the welfare state, and plays a vital role in the lives of millions of people, the escalating costs of social security provisions have increasingly come under attack and are criticized for encouraging "dependency" and eroding incentives. Yet despite its importance for claimants and as a topic for political and economic debate, social security has hitherto been largely ignored by sociologists. This study of social security focuses on four main themes: the changing objective of social security programmes; their interaction with the labour market and their effect on incentives; their lack of sensitivity to gender issues, particularly the greater vulnerability of women to poverty; and the administrative responses of social security systems to an ever-changing and more complex world.