Beyond Beveridge: Have social security shifts prepared us for economic change?

The modern welfare state is approaching its 75th anniversary, but continual reforms and wider economic change mean that it bears little resemblance to the system first envisaged by William Beveridge. And it faces new challenges, with Covid, Brexit and net zero – coupled with rapid demographic and technological change – set to reshape our economy in the 2020s.

What changes has the welfare state seen in recent decades? How strong is our basic safety net? What protection exists for those temporarily falling on hard times? How well suited is our social security system for the big economic changes of the 2020s? And how can the UK’s safety net be strengthened?

The Resolution Foundation is hosting an in-person and interactive webinar – as part of The Economy 2030 Inquiry, a joint project with the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation – to debate and answer these questions. Following a presentation of new research on how the welfare system has changed in recent decades, and may need to change over the coming decade, we will hear from leading experts Minouche Shafik and Nick Timmins on how our shifting social security copes with economic change.

Read the report: https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/social-insecurity/ 

View the event slides: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/beyond-beveridge/