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Family Allowances to Child Benefit: Keynesian In-Work Relief Delivered by Beveridge?

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Abstract

The defining moments in the history of modern British social security were Speenhamland with its allowances-in-aid of wages in the late eighteenth century; the new poor law of less eligibility and the deterrent workhouse test in the mid-1830s; the coming of universal ‘insurance’ benefits in the first decade of the twentieth century; and the massive reconstruction of the welfare state in the late 1940s which we now term the Keynes-Beveridge settlement. Since then we have merely churned the administration, the principles, the explanations, and varied the justifications depending on political ideology, economic theory and circumstances. There may be only one thing that is ‘new’ since 1948, but it constitutes a major reorientation of objectives accompanied by a quite dramatic change in style and presentation. The Work Connection has shown how today’s in-work benefits may be a rebranding of Speenhamland and may historically derive from Family Income Supplement, but they are the product-leader in the new style of social security which openly avows non-work orientated benefits to be a dead-weight on the economy.

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© 2002 Chris Grover and John Stewart

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Grover, C., Stewart, J. (2002). Family Allowances to Child Benefit: Keynesian In-Work Relief Delivered by Beveridge?. In: The Work Connection. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510425_7

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