In many societies charity has been the traditional way in which provision was made for the poor. Charitable giving has been encouraged by many different religions, and in many parts of the world religious agencies have long collected charitable donations and distributed help to those in need.

The imposition of obligations on communities to pay taxes in order to provide for the poor can be traced back for hundreds of years in a number of different societies. For example, part of the function of the Christian tithe or the Islāmic zakat was to provide for the poor. Town poor laws were passed in Germany from 1520 onward, and a law passed in 1530 clearly placed on towns and communities the obligation of sustaining the poor. In 1794 the Prussian states assumed the responsibility of providing food and lodgings for those citizens who were unable to support and fend for themselves. From the 16th century it became recognized in England that there were people who could not find work, and legislation was passed to provide work for the poor and houses of correction for rogues and idlers. From 1598 a clear obligation was placed on parishes to levy local taxes and appoint overseers of the poor in order to give relief to those who could not work and to provide work for those who could. This formed was the essence of the Elizabethan Poor Laws, an early provision of social assistance.

The Elizabethan Poor Laws were poorly enforced in the 17th century but widely used and liberalized by the end of the 18th century. A new Poor Law enacted in 1834, and reflecting a harsh moral view of poverty, required the poor persons to be admitted to the workhouse so as to receive relief only in kind, with occasional exceptions, but this again was by no means uniformly enforced, though it added greatly to the unpopularity of the Poor Laws. Some U.S. states copied the Elizabethan Poor Laws but exempted recent immigrants. The English Poor Laws were also introduced in Jamaica in 1682 for destitute European immigrants and much later in Mauritius (1902) and Trinidad (1931). In Latin America the Spanish colonists, instead of establishing a public relief agency, gave grants to charities to provide “hospitals” for the poor (beneficencias), and the Portuguese promoted lay brotherhoods such as the Misericórdia.

The first general social insurance scheme was introduced in Germany in 1883. The scheme drew upon three types of precedent. The first was the ancient system of guild collection boxes—funds to which each member of a particular trade was required to contribute at regular intervals; such funds were originally used for hospital and funeral expenses and for food and lodging for aged and disabled members. By the middle of the 14th century these arrangements were covered by statutes and regulations. Relief funds were later established by associations of miners. The second precedent was a Prussian ordinance of 1810 that placed on masters a duty to ensure that their servants were given medical attention in case of illness. From 1849 communities could make bylaws requiring both employers and employees to contribute to relief funds, and a law of 1854 introduced compulsory health and accident insurance for miners. The third precedent was the employer’s legal liability to pay damages for accidents caused by negligence. As a result of this liability, which was widened in 1871, many employers took out private insurance. The system did not work well because the burden of proof lay with the worker, who normally had to incur high legal costs and delay before he could hope to obtain lump-sum compensation.

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s 1883 sickness insurance law provided to employees in defined types of industry both medical care and cash benefits during a period of sickness, to be paid for out of contributions from both employees and employers. This was followed by a law of 1884 making accident insurance compulsory. The schemes were operated by numerous funds controlled by the insured and their employers. Finally a law establishing a pension for all workers in trade, industry, and agriculture from the age of 70 was passed in 1889. This was directly administered by the Imperial Insurance Office. Austria followed part of the German example in 1888, Italy in 1893, and both Sweden and the Netherlands in 1901.

Bismarck’s political aim in introducing social insurance had been to address the legitimate grievances of workers so as to check the growth of socialism and avert revolution. A proportion of previous earnings were to be paid in cases of sickness, injury, widowhood, and old age. Employers and employees were to work together in implementing the scheme. In Austria part of the driving force was the Christian Socialists’ aim of improving the worker’s position. Although Britain had been the first country to industrialize, the developments in Germany and Austria originally attracted little British interest because of an aversion to state intervention, an apparently lesser likelihood of revolution, and the slower development of British socialism. In Britain self-help through friendly societies and savings banks was seen as the solution. The friendly societies were run by skilled workers with no employer participation and provided flat-rate cash benefits for sickness as well as treatment by the society’s doctor, who was normally paid a flat rate per member insured—a so-called capitation payment. By 1870 membership had grown to 1,250,000 and by the early 20th century to 7,000,000. Apart from the regulation of friendly societies, the only social security legislation passed in the United Kingdom during the 19th century was to widen the liability of employers to compensate workers for personal injury arising out of work. By a law of 1897, compensation could be obtained whether or not the employer had been negligent.