SOCIAL SECURITY

any of the measures established by legislation to maintain individual or family income or to provide income when some or all sources of income are disrupted or terminated or when exceptionally heavy expenditures have to be incurred (e.g., in bringing up children or paying for health care). Thus social security may provide cash benefits to persons faced with sickness and disability, unemployment, crop failure, loss of the marital partner, maternity, responsibility for the care of young children, or retirement from work. Social security benefits may be provided in cash or kind for medical need, rehabilitation, domestic help during illness at home, legal aid, or funeral expenses. Social security may be provided by court order (e.g., to compensate accident victims), by employers (sometimes using insurance companies), by central or local government departments, or by semipublic or autonomous agencies. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) uses three criteria to define a social security system. First, the objective of the system must be to grant curative or preventive medical care, to maintain income in case of involuntary loss of earnings or of an important part of earnings, or to grant a supplementary income to persons having family responsibilities. Second, the system must have been set up by legislation that attributes specified individual rights to, or that imposes specified obligations on, a public, semipublic, or autonomous body. And third, the system should be administered by a public, semipublic, or autonomous body. In its statistics the ILO includes provisions according to which the liability for the compensation of employment injuries is imposed directly on the employer, although such schemes do not strictly meet the third criterion above. For this reason employer liability is included here. An alternative but wider term for social security in the countries that are members of the European Union is social protection, which includes voluntary schemes not set up under legislation. In some countries the term social security is used in a narrower sense. For example, in the United Kingdom only statutory benefits in cash are regarded as social security. The term social services is used to cover social security; health, education, and housing services; and provisions for social work and social welfare. In the United States the term social security is restricted to the federal social insurance system (OASDI) as distinct from state benefits and welfare, which in Europe would be called social assistance. In some countries (for example, Denmark and the United Kingdom) the reduction of poverty historically has been a central aim of social security policy, and the concept of maintaining income has been grafted on at a later stage. In other countries, such as France, measures to deal with poverty have been seen as quite separate from the income maintenance aims of social security. A report published in 1984, prepared by 10 international experts appointed by the director of the ILO, set out the ultimate aims of social security. Its fundamental purpose is to give individuals and families the confidence that their level of living and quality of life will not, insofar as is possible, be greatly eroded by any social or economic eventuality. This involves not just meeting needs as they arise but also preventing risks from arising in the first place, and helping individuals and families to make the best possible adjustment when faced with disabilities and disadvantages which have not been or could not be prevented. . . . It is the guarantee of security that matters most of all, rather than the particular mechanisms such as contributory or tax financing, the insurance or service model of delivery, or the ownership of facilities (public/private, profit/non-profit) by which that guarantee is given. . . . The means should not be confused with the ends. Approximately 140 countries have some type of social security scheme. Nearly all of these countries have schemes covering work-related injury and old-age and survivors' pensions. Well over half have provisions for sickness, and nearly half have provisions for family allowances. The least commonly provided schemes are for unemployment, though at least 40 countries have them. the principle or practice of public provision for the economic security and social welfare of the individual and his or her family. Social security programs are designed to protect individuals and their families from income losses due to unemployment, old age, sickness, or death and to improve their welfare through public services (e.g., medical care) and economic assistance in the task of raising a family. The term may include social insurance programs, health and welfare services, and various income maintenance programs. In the past, protection of economic security was the responsibility of the individual and the family, although assistance was often provided by the local community or church. Gradually, more organized methods of provision developed: the first were instituted by workingmen's associations, mutual benefit societies, and trade unions; later they were established by law. Almost all of the developed nations of the world have full-fledged social security programs. These programs vary from country to country, but usually they have three major characteristics in common: (1) they are established by law; (2) they provide some form of cash payment to individuals to replace at least part of the loss of income that occurs because of old age, invalidity, death, sickness, maternity, work injury, or unemployment; and (3) the benefits or services are provided through several major approaches, including social insurance and social assistance. Social insurance programs are financed entirely or in large part from contributions paid by employees, employers, and in some cases from the government, rather than from ordinary government revenues. The contributions are usually set aside in special funds, and all benefits are paid from those funds. The right to benefits grows out of the individual's contributions or work in employment covered by the program, and benefit amounts are determined by law without regard to an examination of the individual's needs. The majority of social security programs in force throughout the world today are social insurance programs. Social assistance programs limit the payment of benefits to those earning low incomes or to the needy, and an investigation of need is involved; the payments are financed from the general revenues of the government.