“That was seven years into the future at a time where a lot of people, including older people, were living in extreme poverty,” says Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University and author of Social Security: History and Politics from the New Deal to the Privatization Debate.

But because workers had to make contributions to receive Social Security, people who enrolled in the program in 1935 were told they wouldn’t be able to receive benefits until 1942. The Works Progress Administration created projects that employed people who needed work immediately. Social Security stood out from other New Deal initiatives in that it wasn’t designed as a short-term program. With this “Social Security” program, certain workers and their employers would make tax contributions to a trust fund that would later provide these workers with monthly payments starting at age 65. Under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Perkins, the committee developed the idea for a contributory old-age pension plan. In 1934, FDR created the Committee on Economic Security to consider what unemployment or old-age programs the United States could adopt. government to provide every person 60 years and older with $200 a month. One of the most generous proposals came from California physician Francis Townsend, whose 1933 Townsend Plan called for the U.S. But they disagreed about what it should look like.

states also had workers’ compensation laws and old-age assistance programs for people who met certain qualifications.ĭuring the Depression, with so many Americans suffering, lawmakers, economists and others debated whether the nation should create a federal old-age pension or an assistance program.

By the time FDR passed the Social Security Act in 1935, 34 nations already offered some form of social insurance, according to the Social Security Administration historian’s office.

Watch shadow of doubt 1935