Family Allowances and Less Eligibility

Abstract

The campaign for family allowances in Britain rested its case on two pillars of support, economic and demographic. This chapter presents the full story of how family allowances came about during the Second World War. Family allowances were cut to 5s, the justification being based on some rather woolly phrases about not wishing to weaken parental responsibility plus the greatly extended scope of services in kind. But if fighting family poverty had been the Act's main function then family allowances would not have been allowed to slip behind increases in the cost of living in the 1950s and early 1960s and become a notoriously neglected area of social policy. The root of the problem was low pay, but the two solutions were very different and represented the great dilemma that has always been posed by family allowances. In the formulation of the Beveridge Report, 'less eligibility' cropped up once again.