a 
4] 
MAJORITY REPORT. 
the potentialities of serious difficulty, financial and admini- 
strative, which are latent in an increase in this particular 
benefit, and we can accordingly make no recommendation of 
the kind for which we have been asked by the witnesses who 
have brought this question to our notice. 
DEPENDANTS’ ALLOWANCES 
314. As a third possibility we have examined the question of 
providing allowances for dependants similar to those under the 
Unemployment Insurance Scheme, leaving the basic rates of 
sickness and disablement benefits unchanged. 
315. From the Second Report of the Actuarial Committee it 
will be seen that calculations have been made of the effect of 
giving the same rates of allowance as under that Scheme ; but as 
these would bring the contribution for men up to 9%d. a week 
we have ruled out this possibility and turned our attention to 
two other possible plans either of which could be financed within 
the present contributions. These are (1) an addition of 8s. a 
week to the sickness benefit in respect of a wife and an addition 
of 6d. in respect of a child, one-half of these rates being provided 
during the payment of disablement benefit, (2) an addition to 
the sickness benefit in respect of either a wife or a child of 2s. 
a week with a proportionate addition of 1s. a week to disablement 
benefit. 
Of these two schemes we prefer the second, mainly on 
the ground that the former, involving as it does a rate of 6d. a 
week for any dependent child could hardly in that respect be of 
much practical value. 
316. A question of some difficulty which calls for consideration 
at the outset, relates to the provision to be made in respect of 
wives and the extent to which that provision should be affected 
by the consideration that in certain circumstances the wife, 
being herself a wage-earner, is not wholly or in many cases even 
partly dependent on her husband. We have come to the con- 
clusion, however, that for Health Insurance purposes the wife 
should in all cases be regarded as dependent on her husband, 
and that accordingly the additional allowance should always be 
paid in respect of the wife, even where she is herself a wage- 
earner. It is true that such a wife is not ordinarily a dependant 
for the purposes of the additional allowance payable under the 
Unemployment Insurance Scheme. In the circumstances of the 
Health Insurance Scheme, however; we consider that the proposal 
which we advocate can be supported not merely on very cogent 
grounds of administrative convenience, but on other grounds sub- 
stantial in themselves. At present wage-earning wives are largely 
concentrated in certain parts of the country (as in Lancashire) 
and in certain Societies, and if wage-earning wives were ex- 
cluded from any Scheme for the pavment of dependants’ allow-