William Beveridge, the origin point of international debate on the meaning of the term, used Social Security to include single payer.

"SOCIAL Security" is a term of trans-Atlantic origin. The department of Government in the United States which administers what we in Britain should call unemployment insurance and contributory pensions in old age and for widows, orphans and other survivors, was established under the Social Security Act of 1935, and is called the Social Security Board.- Three years later, in 1938, the same term was adopted by New Zealand to describe its comprehensive measure of income security for all citizens. Three years later again, in the Atlantic Charter of 1941, the American and British leaders, followed in due course by the Governments of the other United Nations, declared -their desire to bring about the fullesit collaboration between all nations in the economic field, " with the object of securing for all improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security." Finally, in the report on Social Insurance and Allied Services made by me to the British Government in November 1942, I adopted the term, in proposing a Plan for Social Security to give freedom from want.

Having spent recently tWo months on the other side of the Atlantic in dis- cussing problems and methods of Social Security, I propose to devote my address to-day to recording some of the principal reflections aroused by this discussion. As a preliminary it will be convenient to explain more precisely the meaning attached here to the term " Social Security."

Meaning of Social Security

What do we mean by " Social Security "? In paragraph 300 of my Report its scope is described as follows:

" The term ' social security' is used here to denote the securing of an income to take the place of earnings when they are interrupted by unemploy- ment, sickness or accident, to provide for retirement through age, to provide against loss of support by the death of another person, and to meet excep- tional expenditures, such as those connected with birth, death and marriage. Primarily social security means security of income up to a minimum, but the provision of an income should be associated with treatment designed 'to bring the interruption of earnings to an end as soon as possible."

This is a description, rather than a definition. In a Pan-American Con- ference organized by the International Labour Office in Montreal last July, I suggested a definition on the following lines: " Social Security is security for the individual, organized or assisted by the State, against risks which may affect the individual even when the condition of society as a whole is healthy." This definition has several implications:

First, Social Security does not cover directly all measures of economic and social progress, such as maintenance of employment, a minimum wage, pu.blic health, housing, nutrition, factory legislation. All these are measures for making the condition of society as a whole satisfactory; they are assumptions of Social Security-some of them specifically named as such in my Report-rather than part of it. However fully achieved, they leave the individual exposed to risks for which he needs provision. The definition implies that the State, that is to say the organized community, in addition to pursuing measures of general application, should take responsibility for ensuring this individual provision.

Second, Social Security, while concerned largely with maintaining income during interruptions of earning, is not confined to income main- tenance. It includes the organization of remedial measures for the individual, such as medical treatment, training and rehabilitation, to restore him to health and earning.

Third, Social Security on its income side may cover not only main- tenance of income when earnings are interrupted or ended, but provision for exceptional expenses, as at birth, death and marriage. These are "risks " to which the individual is exposed in all societies, healthy or unhealthy.

Fourth, Social Security is wider than social insurance, which is named in para. 302 of my Report as the main, not the sole, method of Social Security, needing to be supplemented by national assistance on proof of need and by voluntary insurance. Social insurance involves compulsion and the giving of benefits as of right when the risk eventuates, without a further test of need or examination of means. In my view also it involves contributions by the insured persons: on that interpretation workmen's compensation for industrial accidents as practised in most countries and unemployment compensation in most of the States of America are not strictly social insurance. As is argued in paras. 24-26 of my Report, social insurance in Britain, in addition to the three characteristics of compulsion, of benefits as of right, and of contribution, is coming to have a fourth characteristic distinguishing it from voluntary insurance and marking it as a new type of human institution,. " The term implies a pooling of risks except so far as separation of risks serves a social purpose. There may be reasons of social policy for adjusting premiums to risks, in order to give a stimulus for avoidance of danger, as in the case of industrial accident or disease. There is no longer an admitted claim of the individual citizen to share in national insurance and yet to stand outside it, keeping the advantage of his individual lower risk whether of unemployment or of disease or accident."

Fifth, voluntary insurance is part of Social Security only in so far as the State organizes or assists it, in such ways as those described in para. 378 of subsidizing trade union insurance against unemployment, or para. 379 of promoting special schemes of subsidiary insurance, or para. 382 of taking over industrial assurance. But, as is pointed out in para. 375, the State can promote voluntary insurance negatively by avoiding so far as possible any test of means for its compulsory insurance benefits, and by limiting such benefits to subsistence and primary needs.