Public spending and social policy: the United Kingdom 1950-1977

This article, in which we examine developments in public expenditure on social policy in relation to total public spending in the United Kingdom (UK) in the period after the Second World War, is part of a larger international study on developments in social welfare spending on which we are currently engaged. In Section 1 we briefly sketch in the theoretical background to the study of public expenditure growth in general and social welfare spending iompeting hypotheses - this exercise is in hand as part of the international study, and we shall report the finding at a later date. Section 2 examines the growth of public expenditure in the UK at the aggregate level. In Section 3 we analyse public expenditure at the individual programme level and in Section 4 we summarize the conclusions.