The Welfare State did not come cheap. Its cost, to countries not yet recovered from the slump of the thirties and the destruction of the war, was very considerable. France, which devoted just 5 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to social services in 1938, was committing 8.2 percent in 1949—a 64 percent increase. In Britain by 1949 nearly 17 percent of all public expenditure was on social security alone (that is, not including the public provision of services and facilities not included under this heading), a 50 percent increase over the 1938 level
