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How can society pay for high quality social services? This is perhaps the central political question in the UK today - one that this book sets out to answer. It challenges the belief that easy solutions lie either in extending private funding or taxing the rich. The book makes economic theory and the complex funding arrangements that underpin social policy accessible to students across a range of social science disciplines, including social policy, sociology and social work. "Understanding the finance of welfare": reviews the economic case for public social services; examines the economic and political limits to taxation; analyses the limits to markets as a way of meeting basic human needs; explores in detail the practical ways in which hospitals, schools and other social agencies are funded. In each case the UK's position is contrasted with funding arrangements in other advanced economies; devotes a chapter to the theory and practice of rationing scarce resources and to the public expenditure process.