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Social Security Act, (August 14, 1935), original U.S. legislation establishing a permanent national old-age pension system through employer and employee contributions; the system was later extended to include dependents, the disabled, and other groups. Responding to the economic impact of the Great Depression, five million old people in the early 1930s joined nationwide Townsend clubs, promoted by Francis E. Townsend to support his program demanding a $200 monthly pension for everyone over the age of 60. In 1934 Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a committee on economic security to consider the matter; after studying its recommendations, Congress in 1935 enacted the Social Security Act, providing old-age benefits to be financed by a payroll tax on employers and employees.
A 1937 U.S. government pamphlet explaining the workings of Social Security provided this characterization of the act:
In general, the Social Security Act helps to assure some income to people who cannot earn and to steady the income of millions of wage earners during their working years and their old age. In one way and another taxation is spread over large groups of people to carry the cost of giving some security to those who are unfortunate or incapacitated at any one time. The act is a foundation on which we have begun to build security as states and as a people, against the risks which families cannot meet one by one.
Railroad employees were covered separately under the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934. The Social Security Act has been periodically amended, expanding the types of coverage, bringing progressively more workers into the system, and adjusting both taxes and benefits in an attempt to keep pace with inflation.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeff Wallenfeldt.
