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Pennings, Frans --- "Social security*" [2012] ELECD 1025; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 800

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804158

Section: Chapter 63

Section Title: Social security*

Author(s): Pennings, Frans

Number of pages: 14

Abstract/Description:

The first statutory social security laws were adopted in the 1880s in Germany. They were not the first forms of social security – arrangements had already been made in early civilisations to protect persons with an insufficient income – but they are generally taken as the start of a legal approach towards social security. The reason for this is obvious: the new Acts introduced an enforceable right to benefit when the insured contingency materialises, whereas the earlier forms of social protection were not enforceable by law. The early German laws were introduced under Bismarck, the then Chancellor, who saw these as an instrument to reduce the social unrest which was threatening the German State at the time. For this reason these social security schemes were targeted at workers. The laws were each dedicated to one specific contingency, for instance industrial accidents and sickness. Later German laws followed the same approach: they too covered one contingency only; at the time these were sickness, old age, disability, death of the breadwinner and unemployment.