Social Insurance

Report Outline
Postwar Expansion of Social Security System
Operation of Present Social Security System
Current Proposals to Strengthen Social Security
Special Focus

Postwar Expansion of Social Security System

The social security system is at present under reexamination by committees of Congress—on the basis of its first ten years of operation—to determine what improvements can be made and what new protections can be added for the postwar period. In successive annual reports the Social Security Board has recommended wide extensions of the unemployment insurance and old-age security programs set up in 1935, and the provision of new forms of social insurance.

More than 100 bills have been offered in the present Congress to increase present benefit rates, to extend the coverage of the system to additional classes of workers, to authorize insurance against additional classes of risks. Three factors combine to create an atmosphere generally favorable to liberalization of the system at the 1946 session of Congress. They are the increased cost of living, the large size of the insurance reserves, and the approach of the 1946 congressional elections.

Wartime Growth of Social Security Reserves

Due to substantially full employment at largely increased wage rates, payments into the social security accounts increased rapidly during the war years. There was a simultaneous decline in payments out of the accounts, due to the virtual disappearance of compensable unemployment and the continuation at work of persons who would otherwise have been eligible for retirement annuities.