Social Security Financing

For most of its working life—which began in 1935—the social security system has been the most popular and creditable social program in the United States. Its benefits have grown over the years—and not only in nominal terms, but in real ones as well. Public trust in its soundness has been as close to universal as its coverage, which now stands at nearly 94 percent of the working population. By the early 1970s, however, serious cracks in the financial underpinnings of the system began to be widely noted. The crisis of public confidence that developed—with some clamoring to get out of the system altogether—realistically reflected financial difficulties that are apt to persist through the first half of the twenty-first century, based on current projections of declining birth rates (causing a higher retiree/worker ratio) and productivity growth rates.

Social Security Financing faces up to these and related problems and proposes a range of workable solutions, including alternative methods for financing the system that would overhaul its entire fiscal structure. The book—which is based on an intensive study sponsored by the Social Security Administration and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and the National Institute for Advanced Studies in 1980—deals with both the economics and the politics of the issues involved.

Alternate Methods of Social Security Overview of the Symposium, Felicity Skidmore; Issues in Social Security History and Policy Framework, Marilyn Manser; The Economic Effects of Social Security's OASI Program, George F. Break; Financing Social A Reappraisal, Richard A. Musgrave; Financing Social VAT Versus the Payroll Tax, Charles E. McLure, Jr.; Political Perspective on Social Security Financing, Peter N. Stearns; Sorting Out the Issues in Social Security American Politics and Public Opinion, D. Garth Taylor.