ABSTRACT
This chapter looks firstly at the particular issue of 'poverty' and why any research about the extent of poverty relies on certain ethical assumptions. It then further examines the nature of ethical thinking and why policy-makers need to be able to engage in rational value analysis and debate. Living in general and making social policy in particular are activities grounded in diverse ideas about goods like justice, happiness or living virtuously. Ethical debate begins with the fact that social coexistence presents a variety of ideas about how we should conduct ourselves in the light of our ideas about what is good. The chapter demonstrates that the point of all this for social policy by considering one of the major contemporary debates making up the so-called 'welfare reform' debate, or what Mendes has called the 'welfare wars'.
