The Social Security Act is a federal law of the United States approved by Congress on August 14, 1935, establishing the first norm of a US public administration aimed at sustaining a welfare state.
The law was enacted in the context of the New Deal promoted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and gave a definitive character to local measures of assistance to elderly people who had become seriously impoverished as a result of the Great Depression.
The new law established a social protection system at the federal level: retirement for people over 65 years old, insurance against unemployment and various aids for the disabled, but the diseases and disability were not covered. The blind and handicapped children received grants financed by federal grants awarded in the states. Progressively, the system covered a wider part of the population, particularly thanks to the 1939 and 1950 amendments, but initially it was restricted to the limits initially imposed by Roosevelt.