Social Security is 68 years old
Last month, Social Security celebrates its 68th birthday! On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
I thought this is a good opportunity to review some of the other milestones that mark the history of one of our country’s most popular government programs.
On Oct. 14, 1936, 14 months to the day after the law was signed, the new Social Security Board (the name would later be changed to the Social Security Administration) opened its first field office. It was located in Austin, Texas. Today, there are about 1,300 Social Security offices in small towns and large cities across America.
On Nov. 24, 1936, the Social Security Board started issuing Social Security numbers through local post offices. The first Social Security number was issued to a man in New Rochelle, N.Y. But the lowest number ever issued, 001-01-0001, went to a woman living in Concord, N.H. Sixty-eight years later, more than 400 million Social Security numbers have been issued.
And, of course, people no longer go to the post office to get a number. In fact, today, with the help of hospitals and bureaus of vital statistics around the country, most Social Security numbers are applied for before the child leaves the hospital.
On Aug. 10, 1939, the Social Security law was amended to include benefits to the spouses and children of retirees and to the widows and children of workers who died. Today, in addition to more than 29 million retirees, Social Security pays monthly benefits to more than three million of their spouses and children. And Social Security sends monthly survivor benefits to about seven million widows, widowers and children.
On Jan. 31, 1940, Ida May Fuller of Vermont became the first person in the country to receive a monthly Social Security check. Ms. Fuller’s first Social Security check was in the amount of $22.54. She lived until the age of 100 and passed away in January 1975. In her 35 years as a Social Security beneficiary, she received more than $22,000 in benefits.
On Aug. 1, 1956, the disability program was added to Social Security. Today, more than 5 million people with severe disabilities get monthly benefits, along with another 1.7 million spouses and children.
On July 30, 1965, the Medicare program was born. Although it is part of the Social Security Act, and for many years the program was managed by the Social Security Administration, beginning in 1977, control was turned over to the newly created Health Care Financing Administration (now called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services).
On May 17, 1994, Social Security jumped onto the World Wide Web with an Internet site that has become one of the most popular of all government agency Web sites. Today, you can use the site to file for Social Security benefits, find calculators to help figure future benefits, get answers to many questions about Social Security, do research on various Social Security topics and access many other services. In 1994, about 22,000 people visited our Web site; in 2002, more than 40 million did.