Health ‘On the Welfare’ – A Case Study

Abstract

A welfare benefit concerns a ‘need’ which a society has decided ‘ought’ to be met. What match is there between the system of welfare which has been laid down by legislation, and the way in which the members of society who are the potential recipients conceive of it? If, as Titmuss has said, definitions of needs are the interdependent manifestations ‘first, of society's wish to survive as an organic whole and, secondly, of the expressed wish of all the people to assist the survival of some people,’ how are these two objectives related, and how do the concepts of need held by ‘all the people’ match those held by the ‘some’? How in practice is the ‘need’ defined, and how do individuals define their own needs?