| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
The politics of dependency estimates
— Social Security Board statistics, 1935-1939 | | Author(s) | Brian Gratton |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 52B, no 3, May 1997 |
| Pages | pp S117-S124 |
| Keywords | Poverty ; Social security [generally] ; Social welfare ; Social policy ; Central government departments and agencies ; Pressure groups ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Theorists maintain that US Social Security Board (SSB) bureaucrats managed the evolution of public welfare. Institutional politics theory more readily accepts the influence of political interest groups. SSB archival records offer an opportunity to contrast these models and explore the early measurement of old age dependency. In reports designed to protect the 1935 Social Security Act, SSB staff exaggerated the extent of dependency among older people. Board statistics clearly showed that children were more impoverished than older people. SSB leadership did not repudiate prior estimates, and they accepted rising transfers to older people, largely because of the political power of interest groups interested in flat-rate pensions. While bureaucrats attempted to control events, an institutional politics approach better explains both the pivotal role of other, political actors and solidification of the view that all older people needed state assistance. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-971125253 A |
| Classmark | W6: TYA: TY: TM2: PC: PME: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|