COST OF SOCIAL SECURITY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26198, 23 August 1950, Page 5

COST OF SOCIAL SECURITY

£3,300,000 INCREASE IN YEAR REPORT TABLED IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, August 22. Social security cost £45,633,258 in the year ended March 31, an increase of £3,300,000. The annual report of the Social Security Department tabled in the House of Representatives to-day says that in 1949-50 the payment of monetary benefits absorbed f37.1f2.149, and medical services provided under the scheme required another £8,461,109. War pensions and allowances which do not form part of the Social Security Fund accounted for an extra £50,034,039. The expenditure on cash benefits Alone represented £l9 13s Id a head. It was distributed as follows, the previous year’s figures being given in parenthesis: superannuation, £2,179,365 (£1,850,079); age, £15,133,751 (£13.790,971); widows, £2,159,914 (£1,911,134); orphans, £31.176 (£27,623); family, £14,850,9a9 (£14,242,202); invalids, £1,397,713 (£1,348,616); miners, £120,061 (£113,659); Maori war, £2 (£ 10) ;• unemployment, £10,402 (£8948); sickness, £1,008,651 (£911,107); emergency, £280,155 (£251,409).

The cost of medical benefits was:— medical, £2,524,290 (£2,306,881); hospital, £2,011,649 (£1,097,375); maternity, £871.386 (£916,120); pharmaceutical, £2,043,843 (£1,793,159); supplementary, £1,009,941 (£861,913). Discussing the increase of £608,757 in family benefit payments, the report says that the number of benefits paid to Post Office Savings Bank accounts rose during the year from 74,534 to 80,636, and the amount lodged in this way rose from £3,705,398 to £4,111,994. The number of benefits wholly or partly diverted in payment of income tax continued to fall, from 4737 to 3825 at March 31, 1950, and the amount paid to the Commissioner of Taxes for the year was £175,945, compared with £198,874 for the previous year. Family benefits in force at March 31 totalled 254,920, representing 567,587 children. At the end of the preceding year there were 248,726 benefits, covering 548,330 children.