“…over the ensuing decades, it contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among the elderly…..”
Imagine being a senior citizen without the assurance that you will have a basic lifetime income from Social Security.
“The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law was part of Roosevelt’s New Deal domestic program.
“By the 1930s, the United States was the only modern industrial country without any national system of social security. In the midst of the Great Depression, the physician Francis Townsend galvanized support behind a proposal to issue direct payments to the elderly. Responding to that movement, Roosevelt organized a committee led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to develop a major social welfare program proposal. Roosevelt presented the plan in early 1935 and signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The act was upheld by the Supreme Court in two major cases decided in 1937.”
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