The School Insurance (1953-2023): from social insurance for the middle class to fossil in Spanish social protection

Abstract

The School Insurance is an institution in which all Spanish students who are enrolled in official studies between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight are compulsorily affiliated. If the affiliate does not have more dedication than the study, he can be a beneficiary of his benefits. Students from Member States of the European Union are in the same situation. Insurance, however, is a great unknown, both because of the negligible amount of its premium and because of the paltryness of its benefits. In this study we consider why it was created and why it has ended up acquiring a residual character in Spanish social protection. To answer these questions, we cross the legislative provisions of the Insurance with the declarations of its creators and the comments of the contemporary doctrine to them. Our thesis is that this Insurance was created in 1953 fundamentally to protect the status of the middle class and that it was gradually relegated from the seventies because of the new universalizing tendencies, in the educational system and in the social protection system, intensified since the eighty.