ABSTRACT
The origins of contemporary social welfare institutions are traceable to concepts of religious morality that developed in Judaism and Christianity and to concepts of civic responsibility that developed in the Greek city-states, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. Throughout the many forms that social welfare concepts and institutions have taken, there are some social welfare issues that have endured to this day—issues on which there is no general agreement, and that are considered and reconsidered in discussions of "social policy". The oldest ideas in Western thought concerning how the poor should be treated are the Judaic, which prescribe kindness, consideration, and material help. It is widely believed in the United States that most people are self-supporting and independent, while a noticeable but too large minority are dependent. However, the notion that society can simply be divided into two broad classes of people, taxpayers and "tax-eaters", is a gross oversimplification.
