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Legacies of Altruism: Richard Titmuss, Marie Meinhardt, and Health Policy Research in the 1940s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2018

Ann Oakley
Ann Oakley*
Affiliation:
Social Science Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education E-mail: a.oakley@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

During the Second World War, a German economist, Marie Dessauer, later Marie Meinhardt, worked with the British welfare state scholar and policy analyst Richard Titmuss on pioneering studies of social factors and health. Titmuss is remembered today for his role in establishing social policy as an academic discipline, and for his internationally-renowned works on welfare, health and public policy. Meinhardt's career as an economist has been largely forgotten. This was an unusual alliance with far-reaching consequences, as Meinhardt later bequeathed a large sum of money to the London School of Economics, where Titmuss worked, to help fund social policy students and research. This article documents the story of the Titmuss-Meinhardt collaboration, locating it in the context of Titmuss's last and probably best-known work, The Gift Relationship, which analyses the function of altruistic giving in promoting healthy and democratic social relations.

Keywords

Social policyeconomicshealthdonationinequalities
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 383 - 392
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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