Economies of Scale in Residential Care

Abstract

The rapid growth in the British public sector since the turn of the century, and particularly since the end of the last war, has been most noticeably experienced in the social services. By 1974, expenditure on the health, welfare, education, housing, and income maintenance services accounted for almost half of total expenditure, having grown at an average rate of exactly ten per cent per annum since 1951. Unfortunately, this growth has not been accompanied by an increased awareness of the need for socio‐economic monitoring and analysis of service provision. Only since the oil crisis of 1973, as cutback has followed cutback, and as central and local government administrators have been faced with the problem of increasing, or at least maintaining, output levels whilst input supplies have steadily fallen, has attention been focused upon efficiency and effectiveness.

Citation

Knapp, M.R.J. (1978), "Economies of Scale in Residential Care", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 81-92. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013822