ENGLISH

Creating the Welfare State in France, 1880-1940

By Timothy B. Smith

Book information

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Year
2003
ISBN
9780773570436, 9780773524095
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
13 MB (13827421 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
250\250
Time added
2023-08-12 04:52:10

Description

Smith shows that France's most important social legislation to date - providing medical insurance, maternity benefits, modest pensions, and disability benefits to millions of people - was passed in 1928 (and amended and put into practice in 1930). This law, misrepresented in textbooks as being an utter failure, covered over 50 percent of the population by 1940. Few other nations could have claimed this sort of social insurance success. As well, by 1937 the centuries-old public assistance residency requirements had been transferred from the local to the departmental (regional) level. France's success in introducing important social reforms may require us to rethink - or at least modify - the common view of interwar France as a time of utter political, economic, and social failure.

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