The concept of retirement as we know it was born 90 years ago this month.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Social Security into law on Aug. 14, 1935, ushering in the idea of a time of independence from work.
At that time, Americans had no meaningful way to plan for an income after work ended — large-scale pensions and retirement savings programs did not exist. When most people stopped working, they either relied on their families or became impoverished. Some wound up in poorhouses — government-run facilities that provided support, such as shelter and food, often in exchange for work. “Almost every state had them, and they mainly housed old people,” said Nancy Altman, a Social Security advocate who has written several books about the history of the program.
It was the depths of the Great Depression, and roughly half of America’s elderly population lived in poverty.
In the decades since, Social Security has played a key role in improving the economic security of seniors — it prevented an additional 16.3 million adults age 65 and older from living below the poverty line in 2023, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Without Social Security, that would have meant a poverty rate of 37.3 percent, compared with the rate of 10 percent that year.
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