ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the question whether, and when, a welfare state ought to deliver benefits in kind rather than in cash. I begin with two other issues that bear on it. The first is the argument between Amartya Sen and Peter Townsend concerning the 'relativity' or 'absoluteness' of the concept of need — and thus of related concepts such as that of welfare or the standard of living. 1 The moral of the argument is that we must discriminate between the causal and the symbolic impact of goods and services. It is not the bare fact of being 'worse off than others that counts, nor what the prevailing conception of the good life happens to be, but the impact of those things upon the welfare of the individual.
