Beveridge, the son of a British civil servant in India, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. More than any other single figure, he brought the welfare state to Britain. His lifelong interest in the causes and cures of unemployment began in 1903 with his appointment as subwarden of Toynbee Hall, a London settlement house. At one of her famous strategic dinner parties, British socialist Beatrice Webb (Webb, Sidney and Beatrice) introduced her young protégé, Beveridge, to Winston Churchill (Churchill, Sir Winston). Churchill then invited Beveridge to serve as an adviser to the Board of Trade.

Beveridge continued to serve in government, next as director of Labour Exchanges (1909–16) and later as permanent secretary of the Ministry of Food (1919). He directed the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1919 until 1937, when he was elected master of University College, Oxford. He was knighted in 1919 and was created a baron in 1946.

In Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909), Beveridge argued that unemployment was in large measure caused by the organization of industry. His revised views, set forth in Full Employment in a Free Society (1944), were strongly influenced by Keynesian (Keynes, John Maynard) economics. Beveridge's most notable achievement came during World War II, when, at the invitation of the government, he helped work out the blueprints of the new British welfare state. His written works include Insurance for All (1924), British Food Control (1928), Planning Under Socialism (1936), Pillars of Security (1948), Power and Influence (1953), and A Defence of Free Learning (1959).