A Proposal for Refinancing the Social Security Retirement Insurance Program to Ensure Longevity
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Date
2021-12
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Abstract
Per the SSA’s estimates, the population of the United States will shift gradually to have more senior citizens with higher mortality rates than working-age citizens. As a result, the current “pay-as-you-go” structure of the program will need to shift to accommodate the American population’s needs. Without funding in the Retirement Insurance Program, any American citizen who has paid U.S. Social Security taxes throughout their time of employment will not receive any benefits. The number of retirement-age Americans will increase from the 56 million people it supports today to over 78 million people by 2035. Until the projected “depletion” year of 2033, the program consists of funds paid forward by the generations that will never reap the benefits. Without the Retirement Insurance, around 180 million workers would not receive pension coverage. The procedures for analyzing this problem will be conducted through studying the history of the Social Security Act, key actors, and relevant historical Amendments to the bill. Additional methods include a policy and political analyses of the proposed Amendments in this dissertation. The results of these analyses demonstrated that this refinancing policy will be successful in restoring immediate funding for the Retirement Insurance program trust funds and amending the structure of the program to ensure longevity of the trust funds for the next 50 years. This analysis concluded that since this policy only seeks to establish changes to the trust funds of the Retirement Insurance program that has been done before, this policy is not any different in feasibility or application than those Amendments enacted historically.
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refinancing, longevity, Social Security