What are the possibilities and prospects for Social Security over the decades ahead? The essays in this interdisciplinary study explore what social insurance has meant historically, socially, economically, politically, and legally in the years since the founding of the American social security system in 1935. Questions examined include: Does Social Security have a coherent and defendable ideology? If so, is that ideology adequate to the demands of a contemporary political environment that seems to emphasize the re-privatization of many roles adopted by the modern welfare state? What...

What are the possibilities and prospects for Social Security over the decades ahead? The essays in this interdisciplinary study explore what social insurance has meant historically, socially, economically, politically, and legally in the years since the founding of the American social security system in 1935. Questions examined include: Does Social Security have a coherent and defendable ideology? If so, is that ideology adequate to the demands of a contemporary political environment that seems to emphasize the re-privatization of many roles adopted by the modern welfare state? What...