An appreciation of the role it plays in retirement finance
It was on Aug. 14, 1935, that then-President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. It has grown over the intervening decades to become the pre-eminent source of retirement financial security for a large percentage of the elderly population.
To help drive home how big a difference Social Security makes to the elderly poverty rate, take a look at the accompanying chart, based on data from the CBPP. For each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the chart shows the percentage of elderly in that state that would be living below the poverty line, both currently and assuming Social Security didn’t exist.
The best birthday present we could give Social Security would be to spend less energy on those academic issues and focus on what can be done practically to strengthen the system.Another way of appreciating what Social Security offers is to estimate the cost of annuity that would provide the same guaranteed income stream. It will have to be an estimate because, unlike Social Security, no insurance company currently offers an annuity whose payments are indexed to inflation.
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