The unwanted heroes: war invalids in Poland after World War I.

This article focuses on the unique and hitherto unknown history of disabled ex-servicemen and civilians in interwar Poland. In 1914, thousands of Poles were conscripted into the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies and forced to fight against each other. When the war ended and Poland regained independence after more than one hundred years of partition, the fledgling government was unable to provide support for the more than three hundred thousand disabled war victims, not to mention the many civilians left injured or orphaned by the war. The vast majority of these victims were ex-servicemen of foreign armies, and were deprived of any war compensation. Neither the Polish government nor the impoverished society could meet the disabled ex-servicemen's medical and material needs; therefore, these men had to take responsibility for themselves and started cooperatives and war-invalids-owned enterprises. A social collaboration between Poland and America, rare in Europe at that time, was initiated by the Polish community in the United States to help blind ex-servicemen in Poland.

Lessons from history: Surviving old age during The Great Depression in the United States.

This paper focuses on 30 couples who received a pension and other services from two private trusts in Detroit, Michigan beginning in 1929 or 1930. Results of the qualitative analysis of case files, which contain notes recorded chronologically for 17 of the couples and then surviving spouses, provide a portrait of older couples' lives prior to a partner's death, circumstances surrounding the death, and changes in the social support systems of widows and widowers until their deaths. Close examination of the experiences of these couples is a reminder of how old age and widowhood were experienced prior to the enactment of public pensions and health insurance in the United States.

Was what ail'd ya what kill'd ya?

Making use of those Union Army veterans for whom death certificates are available, we compare the conditions with which they were diagnosed by Civil War pension surgeons to the causes of death on the certificates. We divide the data between those veterans who entered the pension system early because of war injuries and those who entered the pension system after the 1890 reform that made it available to many more veterans. We examine the correlation between specific medical conditions rated by the surgeons and death causes to gauge support for the hypothesis that death is attributable to something specific. We also examine the correlation between the accumulation of rated conditions to the length of time until death to gauge support for the "insult hypothesis." In general, we find support for both hypotheses. Examining the hazard ratios for dying of a specific condition, there is support for the idea that what ail'd ya' is what kill'd ya'.

Comparing pension systems in the circular flow of income.

The neoliberal consensus is that state funded pensions are not sustainable in the long term, due to declining fertility and longevity. In response, policymakers have pointed to the advantages of privately funded pension systems. This article compares the social provisioning of these two systems using the circular flow of income as an organizing framework. A series of pitfalls in the private model are examined, including inequality of provision, mis-selling of investment products, and punitive charges.

Effects of demographic and retirement-age policies on future pension deficits, with an application to China.

A simple method is proposed for projecting future deficits in a defined benefit or defined contribution pension scheme. The annual pension deficit rate is expressed in terms of the elderly dependency ratio (determined by demographic factors), the average retirement age, and a few parameters describing the scheme. An illustrative application to China demonstrates that if the average age at retirement gradually increases from the current low level to age 65 for both men and women in 2050, the annual pension deficit rate would be greatly reduced or even eliminated under various plausible demographic regimes over this period. With all else equal, a transition to a two-child policy (assuming this would raise fertility) would also lower the deficit rate in comparison to keeping the current fertility policy unchanged, although the effect would be seen only after 2030. The effect of potentially faster mortality decline in raising future deficits is appreciable and starts earlier than the effects of fertility change. The proposed method may also be used to gauge the magnitudes and timing of impacts on future pension deficits of alternative assumptions regarding levels and age/sex composition of international migration.

Age of pension eligibility, gains in life expectancy, and social policy.

Canadians are living longer and retiring younger. When combined with the aging of the baby-boom generation, that means that the "inactive" portion of the population is increasing and there are concerns about possibly large increases in the burden of support on those who are younger. We model the impact of continued future gains in life expectancy on the size of the population that receives public pension benefits. We pay special attention to possible increases in the age of eligibility and the pension contribution rate that would maintain the publicly financed component of the retirement income security system.

The Canadian National Retirement Risk Index: employing statistics Canada's LifePaths to measure the financial security of future Canadian seniors.

This article measures a Canadian National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI). Originally developed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the NRRI is a forward-looking measure that evaluates the proportion of working-aged individuals who are at risk of not maintaining their standard of living in retirement. The Canadian retirement income system has been very effective in reducing elderly poverty, but our results suggest that it has been much less successful in maintaining the living standards of Canadians after retirement. Since the earlier years of the new millennium, we find that approximately one-third of retiring Canadians have been unable to maintain their working-age consumption after retirement­a trend that is projected to worsen significantly for future Canadian retirees. The release of the Canadian NRRI is timely given the widespread concern that the current Canadian retirement income system is inadequate. Many proposals have recently emerged to extend and/or enhance Canadian public pensions, and the NRRI is a tool to test their merit. The methodology underlying the Canadian NRRI is uniquely sophisticated and comprehensive on account of our employment of Statistics Canada's LifePaths, a state-of-the-art stochastic microsimulation model of the Canadian population. For instance, the Canadian NRRI is novel in that it models all of the relevant sources of consumption before and after retirement, while accounting for important features that are typically neglected in retirement adequacy studies such as family size, the variation of consumption over a person's lifetime, and the heterogeneity among the life courses of individuals.

Prejudice & policy: racial discrimination in the Union Army disability pension system, 1865-1906.

The Union Army disability pension was an early experiment in colorblind social policy. However, it shortchanged Blacks in 2 ways. First, the law was unable to account for the challenges Blacks faced in proving their eligibility because of the legacy of slavery and discrimination against Black troops during the Civil War. Second, the increasing leniency accorded White soldiers by the Pension Bureau was not extended in the same measure to Blacks. Active discrimination against Blacks resulted in part from local discretion, evidenced by the significantly lower approval rates for both White and Black veterans in the South. Furthermore, when Whites and Blacks claimed disabilities that were easily verifiable, outcomes were similar, but when verification required a degree of trust, Blacks fared considerably worse than Whites.

Poor relief, taxes and the first Universal Pension Reform: the origin of the Swedish welfare state reconsidered.

In the year 1900, Sweden probably had the oldest population in the contemporary world. It was also the first nation to implement a universal pension system in 1913. The universal character in early social legislation has certainly been decisive for the development of the Swedish welfare state. This alternative has not been self-evident. Why did the reforms turn universal, when the continental model, the Bismarck social security system, was exclusively directed at industrial workers? Research has concentrated on demographic factors and growing demands for social security, or on the fact that Sweden was still a predominantly rural society with about 2,400 local authorities. This article examines the development of social legislation in the light of local government expenditures and incomes, and suggests an overlooked possibility: the formulation of the first universal national social security reform was a redistributional response to uneven distribution of incomes and general expenditures among the rural districts in Sweden.

Pensions for 'cultivators of science'.

The occasional (and belated) concern of the British Government with science in the nineteenth century is a matter of potential interest to historians of science, yet many previous studies have tended to range over a variety of different aspects of the question. There have been too many vague allusions to financial support as 'money for science' in general. It is time that particular parts of the problem were unpacked. For example, the award of money (from the 1820s) to pay a few people of independent means for apparatus was quite distinct from the provision (from the 1830s) of an occasional pension. Even then, to speak of 'pensions' uncovers unfortunate ambiguities. For too long science in Britain was regarded as no more than a private hobby for the well-to-do. As late as 1856 an official government statement seemed to make this attitude official. The English attitude to pensions differed remarkably from the French, who established a precedent in the reward of savants, sometimes quoted enviously by British men of science. In 1837 Robert Peel virtually admitted that, in awarding pensions to 'cultivators of science', he was following the French practice. It may also be useful to emphasise the contrast between the English (often led by Cambridge professors) and the Scots, mostly from Edinburgh, mainly represented here by Whewell and Brewster, respectively. Babbage had a different role in this story from that usually told. A large part in supporting men of science of modest means could have been played by the British Association for the Advancement of Science but it consistently refused to do so, although it supported an elite among its own members.

Policy change and the politics of ideas: the emergence of the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans.

Stressing the direct impact of ideas on policy change, this article explores the adoption of the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans (C/QPP) in 1965 by addressing two closely related questions: in the mid-1960s: why did the federal government decide to create an earnings-related public pension system on top of the existing Old Age Security program? Second, why did that new system feature a replacement rate higher than initially proposed as well as a separate scheme for the province of Quebec? In order to answer these two questions, the article analyzes the debates leading to the enactment of the C/QPP.

Committee for the Relief of Distressed Seamen: correspondence from the Admiralty in 1818-19.

The Seamen's Hospital Society, which was to become a great Victorian charity, with the object of caring for both the physical and spiritual health of seafarers (most merchant seamen) in the Port of London, was founded at a meeting on 8 March 1821. However, it is not widely known that it had a temporary predecessor--The Committee for the Relief of Distressed (Destitute) Seamen. Ready cooperation was received from the Admiralty in most of its affairs, but "disposal" of many of these "redundant" mariners proved to be a somewhat difficult matter.

Before the welfare state: Bastian's Civil List pension.

Bastian, an eminent, if controversial, naturalist, pioneer neurologist, and for 30 years, professor at University College, London, ended with a certain income of only L75 in his last year. Sir James Crichton-Browne initiated the grant of a Civil List pension. Prime Minister H Asquith, after consulting the London Royal Society, advised King George V to disburse a pension of L150.

O descanso do guerreiro: um estudo sobre a instituição da Previdência Social no Brasil / The rest of the warrior: a study on the institution of the Social welfare in Brazil

Este livro aborda o processo histórico no qual a Previdência Social brasileira foi engendrada, no contexto das primeiras décadas do século XX, momentos de uma intervenção mais sistemática do Estado no mercado de compra e venda da força de trabalho. Valendo-se dos debates em torno das responsabilidades pela garantia da sobrevivência e da reprodução do trabalhador diante da inatividade causada por doença e velhice, a autora acompanha as propostas existentes na conjuntura, que culminaram com a instituição de uma previdência gerida pelo Estado e financiada, em parte, pelos próprios trabalhadores. O entendimento expresso é o de que a implantação da Lei de Aposentadorias e Pensões ocorreu num momento de acirramento da luta de classes e de redefinição da ordem capitalista, no qual o Estado foi um agente fundamental. Sua ação foi decisiva no sentido de garantir a desmobilização dos trabalhadores sindicalizados contrários à definição de políticas estatais e de apoiar a articulação dos industriais, que tinham por propósito harmonizar a sociedade antagônica para a industrialização do país. Uma vez aprovada, a Previdência Social foi apresentada aos trabalhadores como um prêmio conquistado, um descanso merecido após uma vida de trabalho e de contribuição. Todavia, as reações dos trabalhadores indicam que nem todos se sentiram contemplados com essa criação. Se houve aqueles que se sentiram atendidos em suas reivindicações, também houve outros que criticaram tal decisão, por acreditarem que a mesma constituía a formalização de uma lógica eminentemente hierarquizante, parte de um processo de produção e reprodução de diferenças sociais