How Social Security Works: An Introduction to Benefits ‘tries to explain the shape of the social security system, to explain how benefits are provided and to give readers an understanding of the key issues’ (p. ix). As such, and as the book's subtitle suggests, How Social Security Works is an introductory text to social security policy in Britain. However, it also has valuable comparisons to other social systems where appropriate. The book is essentially written from a social administration view, reflecting the author's concern that: ‘Few writers seem to be interested in social security in its own right: there is precious little being produced on the design, management, operation and delivery of benefits’ (ibid.). The book focuses upon such issues through ‘27 short chapters’ (p. x) that are grouped together in five sections: ‘Introduction: social security benefits in principle’, ‘The development of the system’, ‘Benefits’, ‘The principal contingencies’ and ‘Issues in social security policy’.

How Social Security Works provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to social security policy. It discusses principles that help to shape it, concepts that are crucial to understanding it, various types of benefits and the contingencies that in various ways they are related to. The book also discusses issues that are particularly exercising for policy makers, the media and the public, including the costs of benefits, fraud and abuse, and relationships of benefits to poverty and the redistribution of financial resources. Students with little knowledge about social security policy and those who need to refresh their knowledge will find a great deal of interest and use in How Social Security Works.

How Social Security Works is very well pitched as an introductory text. It is accessibly written and, as far as is possible in analyses of social security policy, it is jargon and neologism free. The text is interspersed with diagrams, tables and explanatory boxes that are used to highlight the main points of each chapter and to highlight issues or provide analyses related to particular benefits. Each chapter is concluded by questions that would be useful to inform individual study, or as a starting point for discussion in seminars. The timelines that the author provides for various types of benefits and contingencies are particularly useful and will encourage students to think about change and continuity in social security policy over time. Indeed, a strength of How Social Security Works is its location of contemporary social security policy in historical considerations.

There are, however, some issues with How Social Security Works that detract from its strengths. Some of these reflect the nature of introductory texts. So, for example, the richness of debate about − and analysis related to − social security policy is in places lost to the cause of simplicity. So, for instance, the book repeats claims about the Speenhamland ‘system’ that revisionist histories of it challenge. Similarly, it contains a rather one-sided discussion of the alleged benefits of loans from the Social Fund for income poor people. The equally valid disadvantages are not discussed. In this context, it would have been useful had the author pointed to further reading that would help to flesh out the richness and nuances of debates about developments in social security policy.

In addition, there are issues that are specific to the book. It highlights, for example, in its opening chapter the various reasons for providing social security, but in the following chapters equal weight is not given to them. The analysis of various benefits and their relevant contingencies, for example, are often discussed in relation to those reasons for social security benefits related to the relief and prevention of poverty, and social protection. In particular, there is little discussion of the role that benefits are hoped to play in the shaping of people's behaviour, despite this being highlighted as a reason for developments in social security policy. So, for instance, in How Social Security Works the development of Tax Credits in Britain is explained with reference to an inability of the National Minimum Wage and Child Benefit to ‘guarantee an adequate income for families’ (p. 97), when equally, if not more importantly, Tax Credits were introduced as means of encouraging change in behaviour among unemployed and workless people towards paid work (HM Treasury, Reference Treasury1998; Taylor, Reference Taylor1998). Similarly, while there is discussion of Housing Benefit in its role in the shift from general to individual subsidies of rents, there is little analysis of its more recent role in attempting to discourage ‘anti-social behaviour’ and the implication of this for income poor families (for example, Deacon, 2005).

Nevertheless, How Social Security Works is a valuable addition to the literature on social security policy. It will prove to be very useful for introducing students to social security benefits, the ways they are administered and their operation. I would recommend that it is read for these purposes.