It is not topical to protect people from economic risk stemming from their personal choices.
Frans Pennings 18, Professor of Labour Law and Social Security Law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Professor of Comparative Public Policy, Institute of Political Science, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, “Social Security,” Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State, edited by Bent Greve, 2nd ed., Routledge, 06/28/2018, pp. 355–365 DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.4324/9781315207049-32
In this discussion it is important to point out that the provisions recognised so far as social security (the ‘old’ risks) fulfil the requirement that their materialisation is not due to the initiative of the claimant. More precisely, it is possible to define precisely when a person is eligible or not, for example, between voluntary and involuntary unemployment. This criterion is closely linked with the insurance character of a large part of the schemes, but is also more generally still relevant, since the sustainability (financing) and legitimacy of the system depend very much on the possibility to control access and use. If one can claim ‘at will’ the system cannot survive. Therefore this principle that the materialisation of the contingency must not depend on personal choices is essential for distinguishing schemes as social security schemes.