Research by Author & Topic

Publications by C. Eugene Steuerle on Social Security

Growing fiscal pressures and increasing life expectancy have prompted calls to raise retirement ages. Some fear this change might harm long-career, lower-wage workers. Tying retirement benefit eligibility to years of service might protect low-wage workers who start their careers early. But higher disability rates and greater employment volatility could offset lower-wage workers’ early labor force starts. Using survey data matched to administrative records, we describe how work histories vary by gender, education, and other characteristics. We find that years of service are not likely to effectively protect the lowest-wage workers, as those with the least education also work the least.

"Investing in Children" tracks trends in federal investment from 1965 to 2017 for children as compared against the nation as a whole. This appendix details our data sources, the programs we include, and the methodology used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children.

This brief charts U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Relative to GDP or domestic spending, total investment and investment in children—under almost any definition—fell over the 1965–2006 period, though with some recent rebounds. More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption. These data raise the question of what relative priority the government should place on investment, and particularly investment in children.

We chart U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Five major categories can be considered -- some more so than others -- to be investment or to have investment components: education and research, work supports, social supports, physical capital, and defense investment. Relative to domestic spending, the most direct investment -- education and research -- for the nation as a whole, and crucially for children, fell over the 1970-2006 period though with some recent rebounds. More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption. These data raise the question of what relative priority the government should place on investment, and particularly investment in children.

Fiscal policy is out of control. Programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, have design features that push up spending faster than the growth of revenues. It is time to change the course of the automatic pilot driving these programs. To do so, policymakers can develop “triggers” that automatically curb spending. Triggers will level the playing field between programs that have large automatic growth and those where growth or even maintenance of effort cannot be obtained without new legislation. The paper examines triggers employed to reform Social Security in other advanced democracies and explores design options for an optimal trigger.

In this Baltimore Sun commentary, senior fellow Eugene Steuerle argues that the democratic process is imperiled by retirement, health, and taxation promises that will be very difficult to keep.

Social Security spouse and survivor benefits advantage single-earner families relative to dual-earner families paying the same total taxes. Our paper considers earnings sharing—through which husbands' and wives' earnings records are combined and averaged throughout their marriage when computing benefits—as well as other changes to spouse/survivor benefits, including caregiver credits and minimum benefits. All the roughly cost-equivalent packages examined improve adequacy and horizontal equity compared to current law. The earnings-sharing proposal, however, only reduced poverty with significant adjustments to the treatment of surviving spouses. The packages reveal tradeoffs among beneficiary groups, with particular tensions around work and marital status.

This PowerPoint presentation accompanies the report "Kids' Share 2007: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget." It was presented at a briefing of the Hill staff on March 15, 2007 entitled, "Priority or Afterthought? Children and the Federal Budget." Download the PowerPoint presentation.

This study reports on trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017, looking across over 100 major federal programs, including tax credits and exemptions. Children's spending increasingly shifted from broad-based programs to programs targeting low-income or special needs children over the 1960 to 2006 period. Thirteen major programs enacted between 1960 and 2006, which include Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and Food Stamps, comprised 65 percent of federal spending on children in 2006. Overall, federal children's spending increased in real terms from $53 billion in 1960 to $333 billion in 2006, or from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Yet as a share of federal domestic spending, children's spending declined from 20.1 to 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, spending on the automatically growing, non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.6 percent of GDP ($58 billion to $993 billion) over the same time period. Over the next ten years, children's programs are scheduled to decline both as a share of GDP and domestic spending, because they do not compete on a level playing field with these rapidly growing entitlement programs.

"Kids' Share 2007: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget" tracks trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017 by analyzing over 100 programs through which the federal government spends on children. This appendix lists our data sources, describes each program, and explains the methodology used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children.