Download full text
(240.5Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.45.2020.2.239-260
Exports for your reference manager
The History of Veterans' Policy in the United States: A Comparative Overview
Die Geschichte der Veteranenpolitik in den Vereinigten Staaten: Ein vergleichender Überblick
[journal article]
Abstract The United States is one of the foremost examples of a country that adopted an "exclusive" approach to veterans’ policy: namely, where welfare programs for veterans are treated separately from those covering the rest of the population. Ranging from free healthcare to old-age pension to civil service... view more
The United States is one of the foremost examples of a country that adopted an "exclusive" approach to veterans’ policy: namely, where welfare programs for veterans are treated separately from those covering the rest of the population. Ranging from free healthcare to old-age pension to civil service preference, former U.S. soldiers have access to a wide range of benefits administered by a single federal entity, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Though these programs are more varied and expensive than anywhere else in the world, their origin remains unexplored. This is not only because scholars of the welfare state have tended to focus on programs targeting traditionally marginalized groups, but also because scholars of veterans’ affairs rarely place their topic in the larger context of U.S. social policy. Both gaps stem from the prevailing assumption that veterans are one of the few privileged groups in American society whose benefits do not fall under the category of "welfare" but instead of earned rights. This paper bridges this divide by adopting a threefold approach: it places veterans' benefits within the framework of the U.S. welfare state as a whole, it retraces their evolution from the colonial period to the Vietnam War, and it sets the U.S. experience in comparative perspective. In doing so, it highlights a series of factors that reflected not only the specific nature of warfare in U.S. history - such as its frequency and intensity - but also its timing and the fact that it rarely caused major civilian casualties or economic destruction, which allowed veterans to claim that they alone bore war’s burden - but also of its political system - for instance, the country’s relative political stability and the fact that the early extension of white male suffrage allowed U.S. veterans to influence politics before their counterparts in other industrialized countries.... view less
Keywords
insurance claim; social policy; historical development; soldier; welfare; United States of America
Classification
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Social Policy
Social History, Historical Social Research
Free Keywords
veterans; war; comparative
Document language
English
Publication Year
2020
Page/Pages
p. 239-260
Journal
Historical Social Research, 45 (2020) 2
Issue topic
Military and Welfare State: Conscription, Military Interests, and Western Welfare States in the Age of Industrialized Mass Warfare
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed