Sources here: Social Security

Trust fund, tax caps, deficits, and more

Today I posted a video about whether eliminating the tax cap for Social Security would solve its finances. As I explain in the video, the answer is “not anymore.” The Social Security shortfall (the gap between all money coming in from taxes and all money going out in benefits over the next 75 years) is now itself 30 years old. Every year the problem is left unaddressed, it gets bigger. So, 20 years ago, if we eliminated the cap it would have solved the shortfall with even more left over. Now it’s just 70% of the shortfall, and falling.

@keds_economistWould eliminating the tax cap fix Social Security? It would help but wouldnt be enough. I explain how this reveals the biggest threat to the program: Congressional neglect. Check my Substack for sources. #socialsecurity #congress #taxes #benefits #taxcap #economy #labormarkets #reform

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I’ve posted a lot about Social Security, to the point that I have my own Social Security educational playlist!

So let’s talk sources.

SSA-OACT

Social Security basically has three-ish websites. The primary website is built to inform new or current beneficiaries about their benefits, it’s got huge font and lots of FAQ’s but doesn’t really delve into program statistics. The second website is the website for the Office of the Actuary, OACT, which is built to inform the public about the program’s financies. It’s less user friendly and has thousands of tables. But there are ways to navigate it.

1. Each year, SSA publishes its Trustees Report, which is a detailed summary of the programs financies. Most recent year here and every year here. In the latest report, for example, the year of trust fund depletion is 2033, moved up from 2034 in the last report, and they note this is due to changed assumptions about how fast GDP will grow.

2. The other great source of data is the Annual Statistical Supplement.

3. Or you can find basically any statistic from their stats homepage. For example:

   1. The tax cap since 1937,

   2. how much money SSA has paid out in each year,

   3. the administrative costs of the program (less than 0.5%!),

   4. how much is in the trust fund (=how much Congress owes!),

   5. the indices used to adjust earnings,

   6. how much people are getting in benefits from Social Security,

   7. and how many people are receiving them (shout out to this table, which is my favorite, because the url address calls it the benies table),

   8. and an explanation of the benefit calculation that includes sources for the indexing and calculating.

4. The table you might care about most, however, is the Provisions Table, which estimates how much certain policies, like lifting the cap or cutting benefits, would reduce the actuarial shortfall. They are all listed here and at the bottom of the page is links back to prior years’ estimates, starting in 2005.

SSA Historian

The third-ish SSA website is the History Office, which details the history of the program and all legislation, including the history of the history office.

This is the best source for information about the content of Social Security amendments (I don’t really trust Wikipedia’s page here). They have the full legislative history of the program including everyone who has testified about it under proposed legislation. For example, I include in my policy classes (and have written op-eds about) the testimony in 1935 by Charles Houston and George Haynes, two black research and policy leaders, who implored the senate to include civil rights guarantees in the administration of the program and warned them that the occupational coverage made it seem like the program was designed to exclude black people.

It’s also got some weird pages buried in there too. Like, the fact this page is called “Internet Myths” makes me think it was written 15 years ago. Of course all the information checks out.

Choose your own adventure

My familiarity with Social Security comes from a short, online textbook that I wrote when I was a research assistant in 2011 called “A Young Person’s Guide to Social Security.” It’s exactly as it sounds; it presents in four chapters what the program is and why it’s important to young people. The report has links embedded back to sources. So, if you’d like to browse the old textbook to see where info comes from, the years are off but the content is similar.

If you don’t feel like wading through a ten-year-old PDF (or digging through the internet to find the video from the event lauching the textbook in which baby-faced me extolls the virtues of the program…), go to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, CBPP, and their page hosting all Social Security related reports and primers. Their policy basics are good but tight and they have all the most recent policy developments covered.

I’m sure there’s more Social Security to come!