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A look back at the Social Security Act of 1935 and its forgotten focus on needy children
(By – Katharine B. Stevens, American Enterprise Institute)
Eighty years ago today, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 37-page Social Security Act (SSA) of 1935 into law, enacting the most fundamental change in social policy in America’s history. But what we now know as “Social Security” was only one of several titles of the 1935 Act, which included multiple programs “for helping people who are unable to help themselves.” Title IV, Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), is one of these. Largely forgotten, but a significant part of the original legislation, it reflects an important period of unprecedented national focus on the well-being of poor children. Responding to dramatic changes in America’s social and economic landscape, ADC aimed to promote children’s healthy development by enabling widowed and abandoned poor women to remain at home to raise their children, giving children “a chance to live normal, wholesome lives in their own homes.” Read more…