Will Covid‐19 change attitudes towards the welfare state?

Abstract

Britain’s welfare state has suddenly been presented with a new challenge – to keep the country afloat during the Covid‐19 pandemic. The most immediate pressure is on the health service, whose ability to cope with the numbers needing hospital care is now imposing a constraint on the country’s economic activity. But, after successive years of reining back the scale of welfare provision to those of working age, the government is now also providing – via the social security system – increased levels of support to those who have lost their incomes, as well as subsidising on an unprecedented scale the salaries of those in work.