A Brief History of Economic Security: Part I Note: This account of Economic Security is a portion of a report entitled “Historical Background and Development of Social Security” prepared by the Office of the Historian in the Social Security Administration. The entire report can be viewed at www.socialsecurity.gov Introduction: All peoples throughout all of human…
Continue Reading »Monsignor John Augustine Ryan (1869-1945): Economist, Theologian, Writer, Social Reformer By: Michael Barga Introduction: Msgr. Ryan wrote a number of influential works including his Ph.D. dissertation “A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects.” In 1909 he published “A Programme of Social Reform by Legislation.” Other works included: “Distributive Justice” in 1916; “Bishops’ 1919…
Continue Reading »Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was established by the Social Security Act of 1935 as a grant program to enable states to provide cash welfare payments for needy children who had been deprived of parental support or care because their father or mother was absent from the home, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed.
Continue Reading »The Social Security Administration (SSA) began in 1935. It became a sub-cabinet agency in 1939, and returned full-circle to independent status in 1995. Throughout the years, arguments had been heard in the halls of Congress that SSA should be returned to independent agency status. This debate was given impetus in 1981 when the National Commission on Social Security recommended that SSA once again become an independent Social Security Board.
Continue Reading »President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s philosophy was: that Government has a positive responsibility for the general welfare. Not that Government itself must do everything, but that everything practicable must be done. A critical question for F.D.R. was whether a middle way was possible– a mixed system which might give the State more power than conservatives would like, enough power indeed to assure economic and social security, but still not so much as to create dictatorship.
Continue Reading »Later generations of Americans have no first hand experience of the depths of despair into which the depression, beginning in 1929, had thrust the nation, and the excitement and eagerness with which people greeted the New Deal. You know many critics not only have denied that anything constructive could have come from the New Deal but they have even succeeded in creating the impression in the prosperous years since 1945 that the depression really did not amount to much.
Continue Reading »This is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian,developed as part of SSA’s internal training program.
Continue Reading »Early History of Unemployment Insurance By: Abe Bortz, Ph.D., Historian of the SSA Note: This entry is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian,developed as part of SSA’s internal training program. Up until the early 1970s new employees were trained at SSA headquarters in Baltimore before being sent…
Continue Reading »This is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian, developed as part of SSA’s internal training program. It features an extensive overview of social policy developments dating from pre-history up to the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935.
Continue Reading »After 1900 several States also passed laws to safeguard women in industry. As late as 1896, only 13 States had attempted to limit by statute the hours worked by women, and only 3 States had enacted laws that were capable of enforcement. For some years, adverse court decisions retarded the adoption of further legislation, but after 1908, when the Supreme Court ruled favorably on an Oregon statute, progress was rapid and marked.
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