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Beveridge and the Reform of Social Security — Then and Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Thomas Wilson  and
Dorothy Wilson
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Extract

THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM HAS COINCIDED WITH A crisis of capitalism. At the very time when discredited Marxist dogmas have been abandoned and the former Communist countries are seeking to privatize their industries and replace planning with the market, the capitalist economies have again displayed their traditional weaknesses. For inequality has widened, and large numbers of people are still said to be in poverty notwithstanding the fact that expenditure on the welfare state in its various forms absorbs much the larger part of public expenditure. Increasing scepticism about the welfare state has been accompanied by a loss of faith in macro-economic policy. Not only has mass unemployment returned on a scale that would once have been thought inconceivable but it appears to be assumed, with gloomy resignation, that the number without work, even if reduced by a cyclical recovery, will remain high for an indefinite period ahead. In these respects, the rich West presents a discouraging prospect to the aspiring East.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1993 , pp. 353 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1993

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References

1 Sir William Beveridge KCB FBA, The Pillars of Security, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1943, p. 77.

2 José Harris, William Beveridge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977.

3 Sir William Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1944.

4 Harris, op cit., p. 435.

5 His relations with students appear to have been happier as remembered by Peter Bayley when an undergraduate at University College Oxford: ‘He retained a sort of boyishness and excitement, and his charm and tact could be consummate’, London, The Times, 25 November 1992.

6 Addison, Paul, The Road to 1945, London, Quartet Books, 1977, p. 33. Google Scholar

7 Social Insurance and the Allied Services, Cmd 6404, London, HMSO, 1942 (the Beveridge Report), p. 170.

8 ibid., p. 7.

9 Beveridge had been much influenced by Eleanor Rathbone's The Disinherited Family, 1924. He came to support the family allowances which she recommended not only as a means of preventing poverty, but as a possible curb on a declining birth rate.

10 Beveridge, op cit., p. 154.

11 ibid., p. 6.

12 Comparative figures for social protection expenditure including benefits in kind, as percentage of GNP, for selected countries in 1988: France 28.3; West Germany 28. 1; Netherlands 30.7; Spain 17.7; Sweden 35.2; U.K. 23.8. Source: EEC Eurostat, Basic Statistics of the Commununity 1990, Luxembourg, 1991.

13 Beveridge classified the population into six categories of which the employed were by far the largest. Within the smaller categories all would be treated on equal terms, although the terms would differ from category to category.

14 The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XXVII, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 223.

15 T. Wilson, ‘The Poll Tax, Origins, Errors and Remedies’, Economic Journal, May 1991.

16 The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation, Report of a Committee chaired by James E. Meade, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1978.

17 Brian Smith, Abel, ‘The Beveridge Report: the Origins and Outcomes’, LSE Magazine, 11 1992, p. 17.Google Scholar

18 The increases were discretionary until 1978 when Labour government legislation came into force, which required pensions – but not unemployment or sickness pay – to be raised in line with wages or prices, whichever went up the more. This legislation was repealed by the subsequent Conservative government and benefits are now adjusted only for prices.

19 The point was made by Adam Smith: ‘By necessaries I understand not only commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people to be without.’ He gave u = as an example the fact that in England decency required both men and women to wear shoes. In Scotland, too, men were expected to have shoes but it was not discreditable for women to go barefoot. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. R. Todd, Oxford University Press, 1976, pp. 869–70.

20 The Pillars of Society, op. cit., p. 143.

21 Keynes, op. cit., p. 143.

22 Beveridge, HL Debates, 1958.

23 The most ambitious attempt was that made by Peter Townsend in Poverty in the United Kingdom, London, Allen Lane, 2.

24 Department of Social Security, London, The Abstract of Statistics, October 1992.

25 Thomas, and Wilson, Dorothy, The Political Economy of the Welfare State, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1982, pp. 80–81 Google Scholar; Thomas, and Wilson, Dorothy (eds), The State and Social Welfare, Harlow, Longman, 1991, p. 20 Google Scholar.

26 Dilnot, Andrew and Johnson, Paul, ‘What Pension should the State Provide?’ Fiscal Studies, 11 1992, p. 2 Google Scholar.

27 ibid., p. 11.

28 Snower, Dennis J., Three Simple Proposals for Reform of the Welfare State, London, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 1992 Google Scholar.

29 Dilnot, op. cit., p. 7.

30 Stählberg, Ann‐Charlotte, ‘Lessons from the Swedish Pension System’, Thomas, and Wilson, Dorothy (eds), The State and Social Welfare, op. cit., pp. 214–234 Google Scholar.