Welfare and Social Legislation
Welfare
Welfare refers to a series of government programmes that provide financial or other aid to individuals or groups who cannot support themselves.
Welfare programmes are typically funded by taxpayers and allow people to cope with financial stress during difficult periods of their lives. In most cases, people who benefit from welfare receive monthly payments.
Social legislation and social security
The term social legislation1 refers to the aggregate of legal norms regulating the use of public money to assist citizens in need. Such interventions range from free care for people in need to the creation and integration of bodies and institutions. They offer maintenance and social assistance to citizens unable to work, as well as adequate access to means of subsistence to workers in case of injury, illness, disability, old-age and involuntary unemployment.
Social security includes social assistance to people in need and pensions to protect workers who reach the appropriate age for retirement.
The first example of social legislation
In modern history, the first state attempt to classify and provide adequate treatment to people in need was the Elizabethan Poor Law in 1601. However, during the Industrial Revolution many entrepreneurs opposed state intervention because, in their opinion, it violated the principles of the free market.
Modern welfare programmes
The first modern government-supported social welfare programme for large groups of people, not just the poor, was undertaken in Germany in 1883.
Legislation in that year provided health insurance for workers, while following legislation introduced compulsory accident insurance and retirement pensions. In the next 50 years, thanks to socialist theories and the increasing power of organised labour, state-supported social welfare programmes grew rapidly, so that by the 1930s most of the world’s industrial nations had some type of social welfare programme. However, not all governments have an equally extensive social welfare system.
WARM UP
In your opinion, which five countries have the best welfare systems in Europe?
a. France, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy.
b. France, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, the UK.
c. France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy.
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1 "Legislation" in English means both a set of laws (It. legislazione) and the process of making laws (It. iter legislativo).
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1 FDR discusses Social Security posted by historycomesalive.
According to President Roosevelt, National Security is not a half-and-half measure, it is...