For All These Rights

The New Deal placed security at the center of American political and economic life by establishing an explicit partnership between the state, economy, and citizens. In this powerful history of American social provision, Jennifer Klein examines the political struggles that created a divided welfare state that relies heavily on employer-provided benefits. The story, she explains, begins with group insurance in the 1910s. Klein then investigates the contests over security through the Depression and World War II. She uncovers how particular forms of private health insurance and pensions emerged dominant in the postwar period over other more equitable or community-responsive alternatives that had begun to take shape in the 1930s and 1940s. Arguing that the imperatives of industrial relations shaped both public and private social security, Klein traces the fate of New Deal liberalism in the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond. Book jacket.

Jennifer Klein is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University