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(7) The rates of contribution of insured persons and employers should be kept as stable as possible, and for this purpose a stabilization fund should be constituted. (8) The cost of benefits which cannot properly be met by contributions should be covered by the community. (9) Among the elements of cost which may be charged to the community may be mentioned— (a) The contribution deficit resulting from bringing persons into insurance when already elderly; (h) The contingent liability involved in guaranteeing the payment of basic invalidity, oldage, and survivors' benefits and the payment of adequate maternity benefit; (c) The liability resulting from the continued payment of unemployment benefit when unemployment persists at an excessive level; and (d) Subsidies to the insurance of self-employed persons of small means. E. Administration 27. The administration of social insurance should be unified or co-ordinated within a general system of social security services, and contributors should, through their organizations, be represented on the bodies which determine or advise upon administrative policy and propose legislation or frame regulations. (1) Social insurance should be administered under the direction of a single authority, subject, in federal countries, to the distribution of legislative competence ; this authority should be associated with the authorities administering social assistance, medical care services and employment services in a co-ordinating body for matters of common interest, such as the certification of inability to work or to obtain work. (2) The unified administration of social insurance should be compatible with the operation of separate insurance schemes, compulsory or voluntary in character, providing supplementary, but not alternative, benefits for certain occupational groups, such as miners and seamen, public officials, the staffs of individual undertakings and members of mutual benefit societies. (3) The law and regulations relating to social insurance should bo drafted in such a way that beneficiaries and contributors can easily understand their rights and duties. (4) In devising procedures to be followed by beneficiaries and contributors, simplicity should be a primary consideration. (_5) Central and regional advisory councils, representing such bodies as trade unions, employers' associations, chambers of commerce, farmers' associations, women's associations and child protection societies, should be established for the purpose of making recommendations for the amendment of the law and administrative methods, and generally of maintaining contact between the administration of social insurance and groups of contributors and beneficiaries. (6) Employers and workers should be closely associated with the administration of compensation for employment injuries, particularly in connection with the prevention of accidents and occupational diseases and with merit rating. (7) Claimants should have a right of appeal in case of dispute with the administrative authority concerning such questions as the right to benefit and the rate thereof. (8) Appeals should preferably be referred to special tribunals, which should include referees who are experts in social insurance law, assisted by assessors, representative of the group to which the claimant belongs, and, where employed persons are concerned, by representatives of employers also. (9) In any dispute concerning liability to insurance or the rate of contribution, for an employed or self-employed person, and where an employer's contribution is in question, an employer should have a right of appeal. (10) Provision for uniformity of interpretation should be assured by a superior appeal tribunal. 11. SOCIAL ASSISTANCE A. Maintenance of Children 28. Society should normally co-operate with parents through general measures of assistance designed to secure the well-being of dependent children. (1) Public subsidies in kind or in cash or in both should bo established in order to assure the healthy nurture of children, help to maintain large families, and complete the provision made for children through social insurance. (2) Where the purpose ill view is to assure the healthy nurture of children, subsidies should take the form of such advantages as free or below-cost infants' food and school meals and below-cost dwellings for families with several children. (3) Where the purpose in view is to help to maintain large families or to complete the provision made for children by subsidies in kind and through social insurance, subsidies should take the form of children's allowances. (4) Such allowances should be payable, irrespective of the parents' income, according to a prescribed scale, which should represent a substantial contribution to the cost of maintaining a child, should allow for the higher cost of maintaining older children, and should, as a minimum, be granted to all children for whom no provision is made through social insurance. (5) Society as a whole should accept responsibility for the maintenance of dependent children in so far as parental responsibility for maintaining them cannot be enforced. B. Maintenance of Needy Invalids, Aged Persons and Widows 29. Invalids, aged persons and widows who are not receiving social insurance benefits because they or their husbands, as the case may be, were not compulsorily insured, and whose incomes do not exceed a prescribed level, should be entitled to special maintenance allowances at prescribed rates,

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