Social policy
[3] It consists of guidelines, principles, legislation and associated activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life.
Titmuss was an essayist whose work concerned the failure of the market; the inadequacy of selective social services; and the superiority of collectivism and universal approaches.
Some of the earliest examples of direct intervention by government in human welfare date back to Ancient Rome's Cura Annonae (grain dole) founded in 123 BC, and Umar ibn al-Khattāb's rule as the second caliph of Islam in the 6th century: he used zakat collections and also other governmental resources to establish pensions, income support, child benefits, and various stipends for people of the non-Muslim community[citation needed].
Surveys of poverty exposing the brutal conditions in the urban slum conurbations of Victorian Britain supplied the pressure leading to changes such as the decline and abolition of the poor law system and Liberal welfare reforms.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ground breaking New Deal is a paragon example of Social Policy that focused predominantly on a program of providing work and stimulating the economy through public spending on projects, rather than on cash payment.
United States politicians who have favored increasing government observance of social policy often do not frame their proposals around typical notions of welfare or benefits; instead, in cases like Medicare and Medicaid, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a package called the Great Society that framed a larger vision around poverty and quality of life.
These laws would form the backbone of the education policy changes of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), introduced during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush with bipartisan support.
[19] Provisions of NCLB were changed and replaced under the Race to the Top (R2T, RTTT or RTT) and Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed during the Administration of President Barack Obama.
