The Historical Context

Abstract

Some people have a fascination for history for its own sake — they are simply interested in how things were in the past. But history is also important in enabling us to understand the present. This is particularly true in relation to the social security system. If policy-makers today could begin with a blank sheet of paper and design a social security system to meet current social and economic needs, it is unlikely that their newly designed system would resemble the one we have today. Attempts are made, of course, to update the system and adapt it to social and economic change, but the system generally lags behind such change because major reforms affect the lives of virtually all citizens — because they are either benefit recipients or tax-payers (or both). Such major reforms are thus rare except in unusual circumstances such as the aftermath of the Second World War. The system we have is, therefore, heavily based, and inevitably so, on the structures and assumptions inherited from the past.