The Townsend Plan, officially the Old-Age Revolving Pensions (OARP) plan, was a September 1933 proposal by California physician Francis Townsend for an old-age pension in response to the Great Depression, leading to a social and political movement. At its peak, the OARP advocacy group claimed more than 750,000 members. The movement demonstrated nationwide demand for old-age pensions, leading Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to adopt a national Social Security policy, though Townsend's original plan called for greater benefits to a greater number of people than Social Security provided for.
Origins
The Townsend movement began in September 1933 when Dr. Francis Townsend, a California physician, first published his plan for an Old-Age Revolving Pension (OARP) in a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram. According to Townsend's 1943 memoir, his plan originated when he saw two old women, dressed in tattered clothes, picking through his garbage cans looking for food.
Townsend's letter called for all Americans over the age of sixty to receive $200 at the start of each month, if they refrained from work and spent the $200 by month's end. According to Townsend, the pension was intended to decrease labor supply and competition by removing the aged from the workforce and would increase spending to stimulate economic recovery from the Depression. In 1978, the national Townsend Plan was shut down, with only state chapters surviving, and that by then it had a "dwindling and aging membership."