Foreword

On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, historic legislation establishing Federal programs to provide old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to dependent children. To this day, these programs have constituted the core of the U.S. social welfare system. Much more than the sum of its parts, the Social Security Act of 1935 signaled official recognition of the Federal government's role in providing protection for Americans of all ages and, as President Roosevelt said, represented the "cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete."

Over the years that cornerstone proved quite sturdy, remaining largely intact as such measures as health and disability insurance, food and nutritional services, and youth education and training programs were added to the system. Repeatedly, the American public has indicated the high value it ascribes to these programs, even in times of fiscal retrenchment. In recent years, however, new challenges have appeared, leading an increasing number of observers to ask whether the system needs refinement and rethinking.

Increasing global economic competition, changes in family structure, an aging population, and other developments have created new vulnerabilities for Americans and their families. Gaps in health insurance coverage, the lack of coordinated skill-development efforts to meet the needs of a changing work force, and the high cost of long-term care suggest the need to review the appropriateness of our social welfare system. Can it, as currently structured, be made more responsive to these and other needs, or is more fundamental change required to meet the social welfare challenges of the twenty-first century?

This is the question the foundation set out to address in 1985 when it established the Project on Social Welfare and the American Future. The project was a special initiative that drew on, but remained independent of, the Foundation's regular programs. The project consisted of interlocking components of research, policy analysis, and deliberations by an eleven-member executive panel of citizens representing the business, academic, labor, civic, and civil rights communities.

The panel was chaired by Irving S. Shapiro (former member of the Foundation's