ABSTRACT
Social Security Programs Throughout the World for 1977 lists 129 countries with such programs, spread over all continents and touching the lives of all races, be it unevenly and unequally. Empirical studies in a cross-national perspective are also essential for deciding whether social insurance and public assistance or social security and social services ought to be integrated into unified systems as compared to organizing them in separate systems. Social scientists agree that when the properties of a model correspond to the important properties of some part of the real world, the model is theoretically useful because the behavior of the model can help to explain the behavior of that part of the real world. Creative integration of pertinent social and economic aspects in welfare policy as equal partners means that social value, the fulfillment of the needs and aspirations of people as human rather than merely as actual or potential productive or consuming units, must have high priority.
