1. This account draws largely but not exclusively on the following sources. The "classics" on social security include: Arthur Altmeyer, The Formative Years of Social Security (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968); Martha Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1979); and Joseph A. Pechman, Henry J. Aaron, and Michael Taussig, Social Security: Perspectives for Reform (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1968).

Excellent recent general accounts include: Henry J. Aaron, Economic Effects of Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1982); Jerry R. Cates, Insuring Inequality: Administrative Leadership in Social Security, 1935-54 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983); Anthony Champagne and Edward J. Harpham, eds., The Attack on the Welfare State (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1984); and Paul Light, Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform (New York: Random House, 1985).

More specialized recent accounts include: Henry J. Aaron, On Social Welfare (Cambridge, Mass.: Abt Books, 1980); Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Governing America: An Insider's Report from the White House and the Cabinet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981); Colin Campbell, ed., Income Redistribution (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977); G. John Ikenberry and Theda Skocpol, "Expanding Social Benefits: The Role of Social Security," Political Science Quarterly 102 (Fall 1987): 389-416; Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol, "Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Welfare in Britain and the United States, 1880s-1920s," paper presented at the 1983 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, September 2; Jill S. Quadagno, ''Welfare Capitalism and the Social Security Act of 1935," American Sociological Review 49 (October 1984):632-47; and Theda Skocpol and G. John Ikenberry, "The Political Formation of the American Welfare State in Historical and Comparative Perspective," Comparative Social Research 6 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1983), pp. 86-148.

Older but still useful works include: Norman Furniss and Timothy Tilton, The Case for the Welfare State: From Social Security to Social Equality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), chaps. 7 and 8; and Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935 Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).

Accounts by participants include: Robert M. Ball, "The American System of Social Security," Journal of Commerce 20 (June 15, 1964):17; continue

J. Douglas Brown, "The American Philosophy of Social Insurance," The Social Service Review 30 (March 1956):1-8; Paul H. Douglas, Social Security in the United States: An Analysis and Appraisal of the Federal Social Security Act (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936); and Edwin E. Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962).

2. On the progressives' stance, see Henry Rogers Seager, Social Insurance: A Program of Social Reform (New York: Macmillan, 1910). For an explanation of why the U.S. did not institute the progressives' agenda see Skocpol and Ikenberry, "Political Formation."

3. See Lubove, Struggle for Social Security .

4. On the reasons for this shift see Altmeyer, Formative Years, p. 38; Cates, Insuring Inequality, pp. 40-44; and Quadagno, "Welfare Capitalism," p. 644.

5. Actually, the number of people employed also rose across this period, but wages—and thus social security taxes—did not keep up with inflation—and thus inflation-adjusted social security benefits. See John E. Schwarz, America's Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1988), chap. 3.

6. For an extensive account, see Edward J. Harpham, "Fiscal Crisis and the Politics of Social Security Reform," in Champagne and Harpham, Attack on the Welfare State, pp. 9-35; Derthick, Policymaking, pp. 392-408; Light, Artful Work, pt. 4; and Gary Freeman, "Presidents, Pensions, and Fiscal Policy," in James P. Pfiffner, ed., The President and Economic Policy (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1986), pp. 135-59.

7. Pechman, Aaron, and Taussig, Social Security, p. 1, and see as well, p. 227: "The history of social security is one of success." On opposition to social security, see Cates, Insuring Inequality; Carolyn Weaver, The Crisis in Social Security: Economic and Political Origins (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982). All in all, however, Derthick's comment still stands: "There is not the slightest evidence that the American people would like to do away with the program" ( Policymaking, p. 3). See also Light, Artful Work, chap. 6 and p. 195.

8. For a discussion of these terms see Lester M. Salamon, Welfare: The Elusive Consensus—Where We Are, How We Got There, and What's Ahead (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 42-48 and 104.

9. A few exceptions exist: A 1966 amendment extended flat-rate pensions to otherwise ineligible people who turned seventy-two prior to 1968 regardless of their work histories; see Cates, Insuring Inequality, p. 85. As to contributions, some economists view the employer's contribu- soft

tion as an indirect employee contribution in the form of deferred wages.

10. See Salamon, Welfare, pp. 42-48 and 104; and Aaron, Social Welfare, chap. 1.

11. Jennifer L. Hochschild, What's Fair? American Beliefs About Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), chap. 3.

12. See Light, Artful Work, pp. 61 and 64.

13. Derthick, Policymaking, p. 408. Cates ( Insuring Inequality, p. 150) suggests that Altmeyer, SSB chairman and first SSA commissioner, thought 80 percent represented the upper limit of replacement rates even for people working at the minimum wage.

14. For related statistics see Light, Artful Work, p. 91.

15. Aaron, Economic Effects, p. 69.

16. Derthick, Policymaking, chap. 13, especially pp. 275 and 392-408.

17. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pt. 2; Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 187-89.

18. Aaron, Economic Effects, p. 7.

19. See Cates, Insuring Inequality, pp. 5-10. Nor does raising the wage base reduce regressiveness, since the higher wages of covered workers are translated into higher benefits. To avoid this problem, the Carter administration tried in 1976 to raise the wage base for employers' contributions above that for employees' contributions, but this proposal was voted down in Congress; see Derthick, Policymaking, p. 408.

20. See Sheldon Danziger, Robert Haveman, and Robert Plotnick, "How Income Transfer Programs Affect Work, Savings, and Income Distribution: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature 19 (September 1981): 975-1028; Aaron, Economic Effects, pp. 29-31; Robert Kuttner, The Economic Illusion: False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984); Arthur M. Okun, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1975); Martin Feldstein, "Social Insurance," in Campbell, Income Redistribution, pp. 71-97.

21. See the evidence cited by Stanley Masters and Irwin Garfinkel, Estimating the Labor Supply Effects of Income-Maintenance Alternatives (New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 76.

22. This theme is developed in Richard Rose and Guy Peters, Can Government Go Bankrupt? (New York: Basic Books, 1978).

23. Harold L. Wilensky, "Democratic Corporatism, Consensus, and Social Policy: Reflections on Changing Values and the 'Crisis' of the Welfare State," in OECD, The Welfare State in Crisis: An Account of the Conference on Social Policy in the 1980s (Paris: OECD, 1981), pp. 185-95. break

24. Aaron, Economic Effects, pp. 31-34; Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 59-61.

25. The U.S. spends about 21 percent of GDP on public social provision, compared to an average of 26 percent for the twenty-four nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); see Hugh Heclo, "Income Maintenance Policy," in Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and American, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin's 1983), pp. 200-236, especially 202 and 204; Richard Rose, "How Exceptional Is American Government?" Studies in Public Policy no. 150, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, 1985, p. 14.

26. See Weaver, Crisis in Social Security . However, Light, Artful Work, pp. 66-68, finds that social class accounts for more impressive attitudinal differences with respect to social security than does age.

27. Edward J. Harpham, "Private Pensions in Crisis: The Case for Radical Reform," Faculty Working Paper no. 8507, Center for Policy Studies, University of Texas at Dallas, January 1984; Martin Rein and Lee Rainwater, "From Welfare State to Welfare Society: Some Unresolved Issues in Assessment," Working Paper no. 69, Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard University, May 1981. On issues relating to parity for couples and surviving women, see Aaron, Social Welfare, chap. 1. See as well Robert J. Meyers, "Do Young People Get Their Money's Worth from Social Security?'' (New York: Study Group on Social Security, 1985).

28. See Derthick, Policymaking, chap. 15.

29. See Charles Lockhart, "Institutional Innovation and Cultural Change: The Case of American Social Security," paper presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, August 31; Gary Freeman, "Voters, Bureaucrats, and the State: On the Autonomy of Social Security Policymaking," in Richard F. Tomasson and Nelson Puglach, eds., Social Security: The First Half-Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming).

30. Derthick, Policymaking, p. 217.

31. Peter G. Peterson, "Social Security: The Coming Crash," New York Review of Books, December 2, 1982, p. 35.

32. Cates, Insuring Inequality, pp. 31-38.

33. In this regard, Weaver, Crisis in Social Security, hits the mark more closely than does Cates, Insuring Inequality .

34. See Cates, Insuring Inequality, pp. 15, 23-25, and chap. 3.

35. Derthick, Policymaking, chap. 15. break

36. For exceptions to this generalization, see Altmeyer, Formative Years, pp. 248-49.

37. In this regard see also Wilensky, "Democratic Corporatism."

38. Jule M. Sugarman, Gary D. Bass, and Matthew J. Bader, "Human Services in the 1980s—President Reagan's 1983 Proposals, White Paper no. 5: For Citizens and Public Officials" (Washington, D.C.: Human Services Information Center, 1983), pp. 22 and 76; Social Security Bulletin 51 (July 1988).

39. See Derthick, Policymaking, chap. 15.

40. Freeman, "Voters, Bureaucrats, and the State."

41. This preference holds in a number of industrial nations and appears unrelated to specific design features of particular programs; see Richard M. Coughlin, Ideology, Public Opinion, and Welfare Policy: Attitudes Toward Taxes and Spending in Industrialized Societies (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1980), pp. 117-20.

42. For a characterization of social security as a deterrent to savings, see Martin Feldstein, "Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy 82 (September-October 1974):905-26. Feldstein, however, seems unrealistic in assuming that the average social security pension is so generous as to discourage Americans from saving for their retirement.

43. Contrast Herman B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced: The Quiet Side of Public Spending (New York: Basic Books, 1986), especially chap. 2, with Robert Eisner, How Real Is the Federal Deficit? (New York: Free Press, 1986).