ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the diverse array of approaches to social security that is in evidence around the world. Social security can be thought of as the product of centuries of human effort to provide people with a means of support in the face of individual, social or economic distress. The European Poor Law tradition has cast an inordinately long intertemporal shadow over social security. The Poor Law experience, by focusing on the morality of the poor, has substantiated and propagated the belief that poverty is the fault of the poor. The master-servant tradition moved social security from the welfare domain of the Poor Law tradition, dominated by the social reformers, to a legalistic domain, dominated by lawyers and the judiciary, who had quite different conceptual frameworks and lexicons and thus very little in common. The broader social security legacy of the master-servant tradition is the view that employer social security contributions should be seen as a legitimate production cost.
