Welcome to Items & Issues, the relaunched monthly newsletter from the Social Science Research Council.
The Social Security Act was signed 91 years ago this month. Its retirement trust fund is now projected to be depleted in late 2032. The questions Congress is weighing about how to close the gap, who pays, and who bears the risk, are the same questions social science was first brought in to answer.
In April 1933, the Rockefeller Foundation approached the Social Science Research Council asking for support as the newly elected Roosevelt Administration mobilized to address the Great Depression. The Council’s Committee on Social Security, established in 1935, advised the Administration’s Committee on Economic Security, bringing social science to bear on the creation of a national system of social insurance. That system is now the country’s largest antipoverty program and is the largest single program in the federal budget. Below, we highlight social science research that illuminates how social insurance connects to democratic governance, risk privatization, gender, credit, and more.
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