The politics of dependency estimates: Social security board statistics, 1935-1939

Abstract

State theorists maintain that Social Security Board (SSB) bureaucrats managed the evolution of public welfare. Institutional politics theory more readily accepts the influence of political interest groups. SSB archival records offer an opportunity to contrast these models and explore the early measurement of old age dependency. In reports designed to protect the 1935 Social Security Act, SSB staff exaggerated the extent of dependency among elderly persons. By 1939, Board statistics clearly showed that children were more impoverished than aged persons. SSB leadership did not repudiate prior estimates and they accepted rising transfers to aged persons, largely because of the political power of interest groups interested in fiat pensions. While bureaucrats attempted to control events, an institutional politics approach better explains both the pivotal role of other, political actors and the solidification of the myth of old age impoverishment.