Most agree that something must be done to restrain future Social Security costs or raise additional revenues, but few agree on what should be done or when. Our research shows how well Social Security serves today's retirees, and how different reforms might affect future retirees.

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The Implications of Career Lengths for Social Security (Series/The Retirement Project Discussion Papers)
Author(s): Melissa Favreault, C. Eugene Steuerle

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.

Posted: April 09, 2008

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Can Faster Economic Growth Bail Out Our Retirement Programs? (Research Report)
Author(s): Rudolph G. Penner

Government analysts portray a bleak fiscal future as the retirement of baby boomers and soaring health costs push up expenditures on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid much faster than projected tax revenues. Some argue that the analysts' economic growth projections are too pessimistic. This analysis argues that official growth projections are quite reasonable, but even if they are too pessimistic, faster growth will accelerate Social Security costs because of the program's structure and health costs are also likely to grow more rapidly. Faster growth will, however, ease the pain associated with necessary reforms.

Posted: March 19, 2008

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Tax Considerations in a Universal Pension System (UPS) (Discussion Papers)
Author(s): Adam Carasso, Jonathan Barry Forman

The inadequacy of the current U.S. public and private pension systems may warrant the establishment of a universal pension system (UPS), which would cover all workers—full-time and part-time—and require them to contribute at a level that can help provide them with adequate incomes when they retire. This paper develops options for a system of individual accounts to which, starting in 2007, each employee or self-employed worker would be required to contribute 3 percent of covered payroll (i.e., 3 percent of up to $97,500 in 2007). The UPS we describe would raise the total "replacement rate" for average wage men to 49.0 percent of final wages—provided Social Security is fixed—or 39.8 percent if not

Posted: December 20, 2007

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Overseas Pension Reforms Offer Lessons for the United States (Press Release)
Author(s): The Urban Institute

An aging population and soaring health care costs are pressing policymakers to realign Social Security’s promised benefits with its resources. So far, reforms have failed, with the last major changes dating to 1983. International Perspectives on Social Security Reform, new from the Urban Institute Press, takes a close look at public pension changes in six countries that, like the United States, are expecting grayer demographics: Sweden, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy.

Posted: August 16, 2007

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Social Security Spouse and Survivor Benefits for the Modern Family (Series/The Retirement Project Discussion Papers)
Author(s): Melissa Favreault, C. Eugene Steuerle

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.

Posted: March 27, 2007

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