The emergence, growth, and redirection of social security: an interpretive history from a public choice perspective

In an overall sense, the purpose of this study is to analyze and interpret, from a public choice perspective, the emergence, redirection, and growth of Social Security. To date, there has been no attempt to explain the evolution of this program within an integrated framework of non-market institutional change which incorporates both the recent literature on the economics of bureaucracy with the more traditional literature on the demand for public sector activity. As such, this study represents an endeavor to recast and review the historical institutional evolution of Social Security, taking account explicitly of a theory of bureaucracy, so that the current and future growth as well as the proliferation of the program need not be viewed as entirely unforeseen and with results that are often unpredictable. Alternatively, this economic, political, and institutional case-study of Social Security can be viewed as a preliminary test of the relative explanation power of pure demand- and pure supply-side models of public sector growth.