Measuring Social Security Proposals by More Than Solvency: Impacts on Poverty, Progressivity, Horizontal Equity, and Work Incentives
"[The authors] apply the measures to simulation output from the Urban Institute's Dynamic Simulation of Income Model under the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Social Security proposal. A series of exhibits illustrates how they work and could inform policymakers about the relative merits of varied options to restore the program's long-run solvency and meet other objectives." (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)
Would Raising Social Security Covered Compensation Cap Be Harmful or Helpful to System in the Long Run? (PDF)
"Analysts have proposed raising the maximum level of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax ... to improve long-term Social Security Trust Fund solvency. This article investigates how raising the tax max leads to the 'leakage' of portions of the additional revenue into higher benefit payments." (Social Security Administration)
The Sensitivity of Proposed Social Security Benefit Formula Changes to Lifetime Earnings Definitions (PDF)
"Several Social Security proposals have included benefit formula changes that apply to earners above a specified percentage of the combined male and female (unisex) lifetime earnings distribution. The unisex distribution is an average of two disparate groups with large lifetime differences in labor market participation. This study finds that if Social Security's median unisex average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) amount is used to define an earnings threshold below which benefits will be held roughly unreduced, the percentage of fully insured men subject to benefit reductions (70 percent) exceeds the unisex estimate of the population subject to benefit reductions (50 percent) by 20 percentage points. If policymakers wish to adjust future benefits and focus benefit reductions on middle or high primary or full-time wage earners in a household, the male, rather than unisex, AIME would come closer to achieving such a goal." (Social Security Administration)
Re-Imagining Pensions: Using Innovative Pension Plan Design to Reduce Risk and Increase Retirement Income
Includes links to videos of all presentations. "Covington & Burling, the Pension Rights Center, and the Urban Institute sponsored a conference on February 22, 2012, to discuss new pension plan designs to improve retirement security [which featured] three panel discussions ...: risk-sharing, coverage and adequacy, and annuitization. Panelists included Phyllis Borzi of the Labor Department, Mark Iwry of the Treasury Department, Josh Gotbaum of the PBGC, and experts from government, the business community, labor groups, academia, and advocacy organizations." (Pension Rights Center)
Video: Re-Imagining Pensions Conference
"[On February 22, 2012, Eugene Steuerle] presented options for allowing workers to purchase annuities within Social Security, as well as granting partial benefits to accommodate phased retirement. While such options technically exist today, they are buried deep within the maze of Social Security's complex provisions. Simplifying and clarifying these options would enable workers to provide themselves with a greater degree of inflation-protected longevity insurance in retirement." (Urban Institute)
[Opinion] For Workers' Sake, Reinvent the Ownership Society
"Here's some good news about America's public-pension system. Contrary to many reports, the country can afford it. Social Security faces much less fiscal pressure over the coming decades than pension systems in other advanced economies. It will need patching, but the repairs aren't that difficult. But there's bad news as well. When it comes to incomes in retirement, fixing Social Security is the smaller part of what needs to be done. The real challenge is to increase saving." (Bloomberg)
[Opinion] The Social Security Debate and American Democracy
"Social Security is not in crisis, as Ken Buffin reminded us in his presentation at NASI's 24th annual policy research conference .... For the next 25 years, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance ... trust funds are 100% solvent, and beyond that window, 90% solvent for two more decades. But to many people on both sides of the aisle, actuarial realities do not matter: policymakers on the left and right discuss the need to 'fix' Social Security and some commentators are quick to brand any talk about the solid finances of Social Security as demagoguery." (National Academy of Social Insurance)
[Opinion] Let's End Social Security As We Know It
"The program is America's number one Ponzi scheme. It was created as a pay-as-you-go system but sold as social insurance with a special tax and a trust fund. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the illusion for political effect: 'We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions.' As a result, he said, 'no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program.'" (Forbes via Cato Institute)
[Opinion] Still a Better Deal: Private Investment vs. Social Security
"[P]rivate capital investment remains remarkably safe over the long term. Despite recent declines in the stock market, a worker who had invested privately over the past 40 years would have still earned an average yearly return of 6.85 percent investing in the S&P 500, 3.46 percent from corporate bonds, and 2.44 percent from government bonds." (Cato Institute)
[Opinion] The Debate We Need about Social Security and Americans' Retirement Security
"Social Security is not a program to be trifled with. Otherwise, as Dwight Eisenhower put it: Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security . . . you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954" (The Century Foundation)
Annual Statistical Supplement, 2011, Published by the U.S. Social Security Administration
"The Supplement is a major resource for data on our nation's social insurance and welfare programs. The majority of the statistical tables present information about programs administered by the Social Security Administration -- the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program, known collectively as Social Security, and the Supplemental Security Income program. In addition, data are presented on the major health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- and social insurance programs, including workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, temporary disability insurance, Black Lung benefits, and veterans' benefits. The Supplement also includes program summaries and legislative histories that help users of the data understand these programs." (U.S. Social Security Administration)
Social Security Bulletin (February 2012)
Vol. 72, No. 1. Articles include The Impact of Changes in Couples' Earnings on Married Women's Social Security Benefits, The Retirement Prospects of Divorced Women, This Is Not Your Parents' Retirement: Comparing Retirement Income Across Generations; and The Increasing Labor Force Participation of Older Workers and its Effect on the Income of the Aged. (U.S. Social Security Administration)
IMF Analysis of Pension Reforms in Advanced Economies
"[G]radually raising retirement ages could help countries contain increases in pension spending and boost economic growth. Further cuts in pension benefits, or raising payroll contributions, are also options countries could consider, although many countries will find many advantages in raising retirement ages. The challenge is to reform pension systems without hurting their ability to provide income security for the elderly and prevent old-age poverty." (Huffington Post)
Government Health Spending Seen Hitting $1.8 Trillion
"[R]esearchers warned that the longer term prospects for rising healthcare spending could have dire consequences for the U.S. deficit when combined with the cost of Social Security, if current revenue levels remain unchanged." (Reuters)
Increasing Retirement Ages Would Reduce Spending and Limit Benefits
"The Congressional Budget Office released on Jan. 11 an issue brief describing the effect of increases in the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare. The CBO found that raising the Medicare eligibility age or the early or full eligibility age for Social Security would reduce federal spending and limit the number of people with access to health insurance." (AdvisorOne)
CBO Issue Brief: Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security
"This issue brief reviews how ages of eligibility affect beneficiaries under current law and how delaying eligibility would affect beneficiaries, the federal budget, and the economy." (U.S. Congressional Budget Office)
U.S. Debt Is Now Equal to Economy
"The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion. That's roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September . . . ." (Battlecreekenquirer.com)
How Would the President's Fiscal Commission's Social Security Proposals Affect Future Beneficiaries? (PDF)
"Using the Dynamic Simulation of Income Model, we project how Social Security benefits and payroll taxes would change were Congress to enact the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's proposal. We show benefits at several points in time and relative to pre-retirement income, a low-income standard, and lifetime payroll tax contributions. Theproposal's projected effects are particularly deep relative to current law scheduled for those reaching retirement in several decades. Projected benefit reductions relate closely to lifetime earnings: Lower earners are largely shielded, higher earners face significant reductions. Projections are sensitive to workers' assumed responses to certain proposal provisions." (Urban Institute)
The President's Fiscal Commission and Social Security
"This video features Melissa Favreault, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute's Program on Retirement Policy, discussing the ways the Bowles-Simpson plan would change Social Security, who would be affected the most, and what the timeframe is for taking action." (Urban Institute)
[Opinion] Allowing New Retirees to Decide What Social Security Benefit Structure Works Best for Them
"There is much talk about the need to bring Social Security into actuarial balance, to ensure that the trust fund stays positive beyond 2035, and the system remains sound for future generations. Why not right that balance and at the same time give Social Security beneficiaries more choices about how and when their benefits are distributed?" (Bloomberg L.P.)
How Would President's Fiscal Commission's Social Security Proposals Affect Future Beneficiaries?
"The proposal's projected effects are particularly deep relative to current law scheduled for those reaching retirement in several decades. Projected benefit reductions relate closely to lifetime earnings: Lower earners are largely shielded, higher earners face significant reductions." (Urban Institute)
[Opinion] Why Raising the Retirement Age Won't Shrink the Deficit
"Washington deficit cutters often attempt to justify a higher Social Security retirement age by pointing toward rising longevity and the need to work longer. There are several problems with that argument. First, most of the longevity gains are going to affluent Americans with access to better health care and diets . . . ." (TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC. via Entrepreneur Media Inc.)
Focus on Social Security and Retirement
With a focus on the intersection between politics and economics, this item lists recent polls, reports, commentaries on the isssues. (The Fiscal Times)
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