Systems of Social Security

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PREFACE The present publication is the first of a series of Handbooks on national systems of social security prepared by Governments according to a plan drafted by. the International Labour Office. It is appropriate that this initial handbook should describe the New Zealand system, since the Act of 1938 creating that system has, more than any other law, determined the practical meaning of social security, and so has deeply influenced the course of legis lation in other countries. The Office renders thanks to the New Zealand Government for supplying the handbook and thereby contributing to the international fund of knowledge on social security. This new series will serve several purposes. It presents, for each country, the entire social security legislation analysed in sufficient detail for the reader to understand how the system works. It follows a uniform plan, so that the reader may easily compare the different ways in which national systems attain similar objectives. The terms and classification used in the plan contri bute to the development of a recognised international methodology of social security. The series will supply the fund of information required by the International Labour Organisation when it addresses itself to the task of revising its numerous social insurance Conventions in the light of present-day concepts and practice. The project has been approved by the Committee of Social ftfBtirity Experts of the International Labour Office, the members 3f which have promised their help in its execution. The expediency of presenting as a whole the social security legislation of a country follows from the general recognition that the several schemes of social insurance, social assistance and the like have a common objective and that, for a fair appreciation of a nations effort to create social security, the complete picture is necessary. The Office was faced with the initial difficulty that there does not yet exist an internationally accepted definition of social security. Nevertheless, it considered that some of the elements of an acceptable definition can already be indicated. For the rest, a certain latitude has been left in the plan, so that each IV PREFACE Government, by the inclusion or exclusion of certain types of scheme, may assist in the development of a uniform international usage. The elements which the Office has assumed should enter into the definition are derived from the Declaration concerning the aims and purposes of the International Labour Organisation and the twin Recommendations on income security and medical care, all adopted by the International Labour Conference at Philadelphia in 1944, at its 26th Session. From these three instru ments it can be inferred that social security measures include those which, in virtue of legislation, provide a basic income in case of inability to work including old age, inability to obtain remunerative work or the death of a breadwinner assistance for dependent children and comprehensive medical care. The plan of the handbooks is devised in the expectation that Governments will include in the descriptions of their national systems such schemes as protect the population at large, or the gainfully occupied population, and their dependants, or groups of these populations, in respect of maternity incapacity for work child maintenance unemployment condition requiring old age medical care funeral maintenance of community death of breadwinner. health The plan, however, does not allow for the inclusion of special schemes providing benefits for employees of public authorities who enjoy the status of civil servants. CONTENTS Page PREFACE m INTRODUCTION 1 Structure of the Social Security Scheme 1 Cash Benefits 1 Health Benefits 2 Finance 3 Other Social Benefits 4 Workers Compensation 4 Maintenance of Community Health 6 Institutional Treatment of Mental Defectives 6 CHAPTER I. Legal Basis 7 1 ...