Pensions
Pensions names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Pensions OLD AGE responsibility of the state in regard to
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
OLD AGE responsibility of the state in regard to the welfare of its more handicapped citizens. In this country it may be said that the sentiment for mothers' pensions first found practical expression in 1912, when the State of Washington passed a law granting a subsidy to widowed women with dependent children. Divorced and deserted women were excluded from the benefits of the law, on the theory that it tended to encourage divorce and desertion on the part of the husbands. This law was amended in 1919 to include divorced and deserted women as well. The example of Washington was rapidly followed by other State legislatures, until, in 1920, thirty-six States made more or less provision for unsupported women with dependent children. As illustrations: in California only widows are included; in Colorado any parent unable to care for its children is included; in Illinois pensions are granted to widows or women with incapacitated husbands; in Idaho the recipient must be a widow, or a woman with a husband in the penitentiary or in an insane asylum; in Kansas pensions are granted to women widowed, divorced, or with husbands physically incapacitated or in the penitentiary or in an insane asylum, or deserted by her husband for more than three months. Throughout all the States the pensions average from $21 to $24 a month. AGE PENSIONS.
Pensions MOTHERS', the granting of state subsidies to widowed
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MOTHERS', the granting of state subsidies to widowed, deserted and, sometim sometimes, divorced women children. Mothers' penwith dependent sions are entirely of modern origin, and may be considered as a phase of the general tendency toward recognition of the
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, mothers' pensions were state-by-state charity: thirty-six states with wildly different rules, paying $21 to $24 a month, and several barring divorced or deserted women outright. The federal government took the field over with the Social Security Act of 1935, which created Aid to Dependent Children alongside the contributory old-age pensions Collier's still treated as an open question of state responsibility. ADC became AFDC and grew into the programme popularly called "welfare"; in 1996 it was replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a block grant that imposed work requirements and a five-year lifetime limit — a sharp reversal of the expansion Collier's was describing. Old-age pensions, meanwhile, became near-universal: Social Security is now the largest single item in the US federal budget.
Written for this edition, 2026.