Abstract

The essay examines the public social security benefits aimed at facilitating re-conciliation of work and family life. On the ground of the different recipients, these benefits can be divided in two groups: benefits for caregiver and benefits for care-receiver. The analysis of the beneficiaries allows to discover that, notwithstanding the different notions of family considered by social security, the legislator is still reluctant to protect the needs of new families and often the Courts intervene to adequate the law to the structural and organizational modification of families. Moreover, the author considers the conditions of eligibility for social security benefits, as being employed or self employed; non disposing of a sufficient income or the nationality or residence of the recipient. Here again, the need to extend the scope of criteria selecting - ex ante - the beneficiaries of public social security benefits rises. The author suggests to face the question of the cost of public social security system, generated by the progressive enlargement of selective criteria, utilizing instruments able to verify - ex post - the effectiveness of care. Furthermore, the recognition of the new families could also reduce the social expenditure, since it can influence the mode to calculate the incomes and therefore the state of need of beneficiaries.