Edwin E.
Witte in 1947
Wis.
State Historical Society
Visual
Materials Collection
Neg #WHi (x31) 17366
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Edwin E.
Witte in 1947 |
Social Security
After the Band-Aid work of emergency relief, Roosevelt turned to developing a more permanent safety net to keep Americans from destitution in the future.
A Committee of Economic Security was established with University of Wisconsin Professor Edwin E. Witte as its director. Witte was an economist who had worked on Wisconsin's pioneering unemployment insurance program. The committee devised a widespread program of social insurance that became law in 1935, little more than a year after the committee began its work.Old age pensions and unemployment insurance were funded by payments from both employers and employees. Funding was provided to states to administer relief to the disabled, widowed, and to single-parent families in a program that would become AFDC.
For the first time in US history, a certain amount of assistance was federally guaranteed to all citizens as an "entitlement."
