Editing Otto von Bismarck (section)

====Old Age and Disability Insurance Law of 1889====
The old age pension program, insurance equally financed by employers and workers, was designed to provide a pension annuity for workers who reached the age of 70. Unlike the accident and sickness insurance programs, this program covered all categories of workers (industrial, agrarian, artisans and servants) from the start. Also, unlike the other two programs, the principle that the national government should contribute a portion of the underwriting cost, with the other two portions prorated accordingly, was accepted without question. The disability insurance program was intended to be used by those permanently disabled. This time, the state or province supervised the programs directly.<ref>E. P. Hennock, "Social Policy in the Bismarck Era: A Progress Report", ''German History,'' (June 2003) 21#2 pp. 229–238 [https://web.archive.org/web/20120606013247/http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/2/229.extract online].</ref>