ABSTRACT
The essential purpose of social security is to ensure ‘freedom from want’ by collective or community provision for those people who, because of misfortune, are temporarily or permanently without sufficient resources for their subsistence and essential health services. Social security systems, being the responsibility of the state, are established by legislation which entitles specified categories of persons in specified contingencies to receive benefits. Social security includes the provision, free or subject to small charges, of comprehensive medical care, especially for individuals in the wage-earning and other low income groups. In the United States, for example, as will be seen later, the proportion of the national income spent on social security measures required by legislation is less than in many other countries. However, housing schemes by public authorities go beyond the purposes of social security and, like education, are properly excluded.
