social insurance

plural social insurances

1. countableuncountableGovernment-mandated provision for the unemployed, injured, disabled, or aged, typically funded by a combination of government spending, individual contributions, and employer contributions.

   Near-synonym: social security (not always different)

   4 more examples

   Panama unified all social insurances in the 1970s and began a process of integration with the public sector that was later halted.

   2008, Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Reassembling Social Security: A Survey of Pensions and Health Care, →ISBN, page 236

   Historical, cultural and institutional attributes influenced Scandinavian political choices for social insurance institutions and welfare policies at the time of the Bismarckian 'conception' of national social insurance on a grand scale in the 1880s.

   2013, Maurizio Ferrera, Martin Rhodes, Recasting European Welfare States, →ISBN, page 209

   By 1942, Beveridge had been an advocate of social insurance for more than thirty years.

   2014, Karel Williams, John Williams, A Beveridge Reader, →ISBN, page 72

   The original Social Security Act (1935) and the current version of the Act, as amended, encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs.

   2016, Stanley L. Brue, Essentials of Economics, →ISBN

   Synonyms: social security

2. countableuncountablebroaderAny insurance run by a government to cover all citizens, including the aforementioned types as well as health insurance of social type (socialized medicine).