Social Security

Social Security, public programmes designed to provide income and services to individuals in the event of retirement, sickness, disability, death, or unemployment. These may include public health, state unemployment insurance, state-administered pension plans, child benefit, and other measures. Such programmes have arisen in many developed and developing countries during the later 19th and 20th centuries, existing both to ensure minimal decent standards of living for all citizens and to some extent to redress imbalances of wealth and opportunity. They are usually supported by taxation. Their cost has gradually become of greater concern in developed nations, where more than 25 per cent of GDP may go in social security, and many developing countries are in no position to afford them, or fear the effect of heavy tax burdens on economic growth.