Published: August 12, 2022
August 14,1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act which provides insurance and welfare programs for elderly, unemployed and disadvantaged Americans. At one time, the program was designed to just be a key financial benefit for Americans who reached retirement age. Under the act, the U.S. Government began collecting Social Security Tax as a provision to pay monetary benefits to persons age 65 and older based on lifetime payroll tax contributions. Under the 1935 law, monthly benefits began in 1942. From 1937 to 1942, one-time lump sum payments were given to people who contributed to the program but wouldn’t participate long enough to be vested for monthly benefits.
"This law represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means completed--a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future administrations of the Government against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy--a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation--in other words, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness." -August 14, 1935"
Over the years there have been many Amendments and legislation related to the Social Security Act. A few are listed below. Read more about social security history , and chronological history of Social Security related legislation enacted on the Social Security Administration’s website.
A Statute Compilation is a compilation of the public law, as amended; it is an unofficial document and should not be cited as legal evidence of the law.
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