SummaryIn one major respect British experience with social security policies since 1946 has vindicated Beveridge's analysis, namely that to be successful, any income maintenance program must be buttressed by an effective attack on other social problems. Two of these, the complications resulting from the varying size of families and the burden of medical care costs, have been the subject of special measures, Children's Allowances and the National Health Service. The former is not as effective as it might be, owing to the still modest level of the allowance per child; the latter has undoubtedly made the task of the income maintenance and public assistance services much easier by freeing them from the necessity of attempting to pay benefits or allowances to cover medical care costs, a particularly important consideration in regard to the aged.But in the areas of housing and employment less has been done. The lack of adequate housing means that in many cases the Assistance Board has to grant higher allowances to cover unduly high rents or to carry a heavy burden of supplementation to meet rent charges. And although Britain has, until recently, enjoyed a surprisingly high degree of full employment, there is little evidence that this has been the result of deliberate policy; the situation now seems to be changing. The next few years may well see social security policy responding, as in the prewar period, to the needs of the unemployed rather than so exclusively to the needs of the aged. And it seems likely too that the needs of the unemployed will be interpreted more broadly than was the case in the prewar period, when it was thought sufficient merely to ensure some modicum of income. In the future it can be anticipated that there will be much greater pressure on the government to provide employment, through general expansionist policies, measures to revive depressed areas, more effective retraining and transfer programs, and perhaps also expanded public works.In another respect, however, Britain's postwar social security experience has demonstrated that income security policy itself can never be determined once and for all. Increasing affluence has called in question the appropriateness of Beveridge's assumption that all that was needed was to ensure a very low minimum social insurance payment. Greater knowledge of the circumstances of those with little or no income has raised doubts as to the extent to which economic insecurity could be eliminated through universal coverage by social insurance, unsupported by a quite extensive national assistance system. It has also become clear, in view of the persistence in a period of high employment of groups of employable persons who for personal reasons are unable to secure or retain jobs, that assurance of income alone is not enough. The future is likely to witness a considerable expansion of social services other than income maintenance, not only for such groups but also for the aged whose needs are increasingly seen to demand something more than minimum income maintenance.