Brookings Institution (30.06.2015) India today is already richer than Germany was when it introduced social insurance for all workers in the late 1880s. Indonesia is richer than the United States was in 1935, when the Social Security Act was passed. And China is richer than Britain was in 1948, when the National Health Service was introduced. So what can we learn from comparing developing countries today to richer countries when those countries were at equivalent levels of economic development?