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Appreciate Your Social Security Check Day – January 31, 2025
January 31
Appreciate Your Social Security Check Day is held annually on January 31 to celebrate the checks that are sent out for social welfare across America. Apart from commemorating the actual benefits themselves, this day also celebrates the workers who ensure that the welfare recipient receives his or her benefits. If you are someone receiving this benefit, take a moment to appreciate the help.
History of Appreciate Your Social Security Check Day
Initially, the world had small guilds — groups of like-minded individuals or trade persons who banded together for economic and work security.
Around the 15th century, the state began to assume responsibility for the economic security of English citizens. Believing that this problem primarily affected those not financially strong enough, they dubbed the subsequent laws ‘Poor Laws’. When these English citizens spread around the ‘New World,’ they took their ideas and customs with them, including the ‘Poor Laws’. The first American colonial poor laws were fashioned on the originals. While help existed, no formal public institution existed for almost an entire century.
Social Security was around long before America adopted this system. In the 16th century, Revolutionary War figure Thomas Paine proposed a scheme for retirement security. He was one of the first people in the world to do so.
In the 20th century, entrepreneur and politician Dudley J. LeBlanc proposed a monthly stipend for the elderly in his campaign while running for governor of Louisiana. He went on to adopt this into his national platform too, after seeing its popularity with voters.
By this time, America was in the grips of the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a plan to provide Social Security to the American public. He sent a message announcing the same to Congress on June 8, 1934, and asked them to create a committee for studying the economic problem and providing recommendations.
Six months later, they presented a detailed proposal to the President and it was passed in August 1935. America now had a Social Security Act. Initially, this act was mostly providing aid to retired workers. This was amended in 1939, and dependents were eligible to receive benefits too. This began the transformation of the Social Security Act from a program for workers to a family-based economic welfare program.