Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 as a part of the Second New Deal because he believed that senior citizens did not benefit from the First New Deal.
The act was enacted in the context of the New Deal promoted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and gave a definitive character to local measures of assistance to elderly people who had become seriously impoverished as a result of the Great Depression.
The levels of poverty and unemployment had increased greatly in the United States as a result of the Great Depression, and a group that was particularly disadvantaged was elderly citizens, for whom "social insurance" of a very basic level was created. However, the New Deal encouraged these social benefit policies to be covered by a federal law designed to protect the elderly, the unemployed, widows, and orphans.
The new law established a social protection system at the federal level: retirement for people over 65 years old, insurance against unemployment and various aids for the disabled, but the diseases and disability were not covered. The blind and handicapped children received grants financed by the Federal Government. Progressively, the system covered a wider part of the population, particularly thanks to the 1939 and 1950 amendments, but initially it was restricted to the limits initially imposed by Roosevelt.
Actually this "Social Security" was created as a public pension system based on the funded distribution, that is, the contributions of active workers served to finance the costs of recipients of aid in the future, without accumulating notable financial reserves of the contributors. Pensions began to be paid from the beneficiary's retirement age.
