Child allowance.

[DH002F6276]

What year was child allowance (I think called child benefit now) first paid by any government to the first born child in any family?

[dot.hawkes]

found this:
August 2006 sees the sixtieth anniversary of family allowances � the predecessor of child benefit. Beveridge, whose report in 1942 laid the basis of the post-war welfare state in the UK, saw family allowances as an essential building block for his scheme to work. Frank Field MP, a former director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), has described the significance of the Family Allowances Act:

�The living standards of children were to some extent to be decided upon by the nation as a whole, not solely by the capriciousness of the market.�1

(my mum used to get family allowance for my older sister who was born in 1954.

[kempie]

The Family Allowances Act 1945 (enacted 6th Aug '46) actually paid an allowance of 5s per week for each child in a family other than the eldest.

Various later Acts increased the allowance but it was not until 1977 (under The Child Benefit Act 1975) that payments were given for the eldest child as well as the younger ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_benefit

[dot.hawkes]

i thought my mum got money for my sister and not us, (MY Brother sister and i) was it the other way around then?

[kempie]

Family Allowance was most definitely paid only for second and subsequent children.

http://www.cpag.org.uk/MakeChildBenefitCount/C hildBenefit_4.htm

Prior to, and during, the Family Allowance period there had existed Child Tax Allowances. This was not a payment but an amendment to a father's tax-free allowance. They were first introduced in 1798, were available for the first child as well as subsequent children, but were abolished in 1805. They were then reintroduced in 1909.

To quote Barbara Castle, then Secretary of State for Social Services (of the Labour Government), during the Second Reading Debate on the Child Benefit Bill in May 1975:
"It gives me the greatest pleasure to introduce the Bill, which I am sure will be accepted on all sides of the House. It achieves a long overdue merger between child tax allowances and family allowances into a new universal, non-means tested, tax-free cash benefit for all children, including the first, payable to the mother."

As an addendum to my first answer, in 1976 Child Interim Benefit was introduced for lone parents, payable for the first child.