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Social Security Benefits Are Modest
Some lawmakers and opinion leaders mistakenly portray the program’s benefits as lavish.
Social Security
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Policy Basics
Social Security provides monthly benefits to retired workers and workers with disabilities, their dependents, and their survivors.
We examine Social Security’s effects on poverty and on particular demographic groups. We also analyze Social Security reform proposals to determine their likely impact on the program’s long-term solvency and its effectiveness in reducing poverty and hardship.
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The Case for Updating and Simplifying Supplemental Security Income
As Congress considers economic recovery legislation, it should seize the opportunity to update and simplify Supplemental Security...
Policymakers Can Expand SSI to Cut Poverty for Seniors and People With Disabilities
As policymakers consider economic recovery legislation, they should seize the opportunity to expand and simplify the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, as we have recommended. The House Ways...
2021 Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ Reports Show Modest Effect of Pandemic and Recession
The annual reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees, released today, indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic and recession will only modestly worsen the programs’ financial...
After Decades of Neglect, It’s Time to Rebuild SSI
As policymakers craft economic recovery legislation later this year, they should include measures to expand and simplify the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides monthly...
Policymakers Should Expand and Simplify Supplemental Security Income
SSI benefits are critical for those who need them, but SSI is woefully out of...
After Years of Underinvestment, It’s Time to Rebuild the Social Security Administration
President Biden’s 2022 budget includes a long-overdue boost in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) operating budget to improve customer service, but the 10 percent increase is still less...
Economic Security Programs Reduce Overall Poverty, Racial and Ethnic Inequities
While government programs have done much to narrow these disparities in poverty, further progress will require stronger government efforts to reduce poverty and discrimination and build opportunity...
Parrott: Our Democracy’s Peaceful Levers of Change, Not Lies and Violence, Should Be Celebrated and Strengthened
While we are relieved that some sense of democratic order was restored, we remain deeply troubled by the events of this day and the fractures in our country they reveal once again....
For Most Americans, Retirement Accounts Are Paltry
Retirement accounts provide at best a modest supplement to Social Security, new Federal Reserve data show. A minority of mostly wealthy Americans have saved very large amounts — many times what...
People Who Seek Disability Benefits Face Health, Economic Challenges
People who seek Social Security disability benefits face many financial, social, and health challenges, a recent study confirms, rebutting any notion that applicants who are denied benefits can shrug...