Edward A. Filene, who founded The Century Foundation in 1919, believed that "social progress suffers when it is sponsored by well-meaning but untrained minds." To ensure that those who determine our future, in the halls of our legislatures and in the voting booth, have the information they need when making decisions on social issues, the Foundation has long engaged in research and analysis of the needs of all Americans and made the resources available to meet those needs.

At the time of the inception of the Social Security program in the mid-1930s, we set up a "Committee on Old-Age Security" to look at the provisions of the Townsend Plan, a movement in this country to provide some pension protection for the elderly in the aftermath of the Great Depression. In examining the plan, the Committee was determined to discover how "the necessities of the aged can best be met without injury to the economic structure on which the entire population depends." That is exactly the kind of fair-minded analysis we continue to promote.

The Committee determined that "the Townsend plan was dangerously unworkable, [but] its members were deeply impressed with the serious plight of millions of the aged in the United States and with the urgent need for their protection." As a result it continued its work, and in 1937, under our auspices, More Security for Old Age, a report and program for action was published. It provided an analysis of the newly created Social Security program.

Through the ensuing years, we have returned to the issue frequently. In 1956, we published Economic Needs of Older People by John J. Corson and John W. McConnell; when the Social Security program faced a crisis in 1983, we published W. Andrew Achenbaum’s Social Security: Visions and Revisions as well as some studies of public and private pensions.

From The Basics: Social Security Reform (Century Foundation Press, Rev. Ed. 2002).