Fair Shares for All?The development of needs based government fundingin education, health and housing

Furthering equity as an achievable public policy objective is based on theability to assess needs accurately, and distribute resources accordingly.The purpose of this paper is to plot the development of the formulaegoverning resource allocation in education, health and social housingand to chart their course as a tool with which governments attempted toachieve various objectives.The paper begins by suggesting that allocation systems can beexplained through a form of public choice theory. Having made thisproposal it then charts the development of needs based resourceallocation from its origin in the nineteenth century, when Sidney Webbset guiding principles, through the pre and post Second World warperiod, and into the major flowering of needs based formulae since 1970.As a result there is an assessment of the rationale used in needsbased formulae during a period when resources are constrained andattempts are made to push allocation even further down and apply theformulae to smaller units.[...]