About William Beveridge
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge, (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist, eugenicist and Liberal politician who played a central role in designing the British welfare state. His 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services (known as the Beveridge Report) served as the basis for the welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected in 1945. He built his career as an expert on unemployment insurance. He served on the Board of Trade as Director of the newly created labour exchanges, and later as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Food. He was Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1919 until 1937, when he was elected Master of University College, Oxford. Beveridge published widely on unemployment and social security, his most notable works being: Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909), Planning Under Socialism (1936), Full Employment in a Free Society (1944), Pillars of Security (1943), Power and Influence (1953) and A Defence of Free Learning (1959). He was elected in the 1944 Berwick-upon-Tweed by-election as a Liberal MP. Following his defeat in the 1945 general election, he was elevated to the House of Lords where he served as the leader of the Liberal peers. Beveridge's mother had, with Elizabeth Malleson, founded the Working Women's College in Queen Square, London in 1864. Beveridge himself became a "materialist agnostic", in his words. After leaving university, Beveridge initially became a lawyer.
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