Social Security
Visions and Revisions: A Twentieth Century Fund Study

This 1986 book encourages lawmakers, academic experts, and general readers to think more broadly and boldly about social security.

W. Andrew Achenbaum (Author)

9780521357661, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 February 1988

316 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.45 kg

' … Sober, thoughtful study …' The New York Times Book Review

Franklin Roosevelt envisioned social security to be the cornerstone 'for the kind of protection America wants' from the financial troubles people faced due to old age and family tragedies. By fulfilling its initial promise, social security has evolved into the nation's largest, costliest, and most successful domestic institution. But the optimistic assumptions that inspired its incremental expansion have dissipated in the face of demographic, political, economic, and cultural shifts in American society. Social Security: Visions and Revisions encourages lawmakers, academic experts, and general readers alike to think more broadly and boldly about social security and its relation to public assistance and other income-maintenance and health-care programs. Pulling together information and insights previously scattered and fragmentary, this 1986 book draws lessons from the past that free us of outdated assumptions and unexamined shibboleths. The re-vision of social security that Achenbaum advocates should become the basis of all discussions of government's responsibility to promote 'the general welfare' in our ageing society.

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Social Security Comes of Age: 1. Social security: the early years
2. Social security matures, 1940–72
3. The mid-life crisis of American social security
4. Social security gets a new lease on life
Part II. Current Social Security Issues in Historical perspective: 5. Retirement under social security
6. Social security and the modern American woman
7. Universal coverage: an either/or proposition?
8. Federal health care programs and social security
9. A vision renewed: individual needs and mutual responsibility
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Social issues & processes [JFF]