Centre for Policy on Ageing



Social security reform — options for the future
Author(s)	Joseph F Quinn
Journal title	Journal of Applied Gerontology, vol 21, no 2, June 2002
Pages	pp 257-272
Keywords	Social security [generally] ; Social policy ; United States of America.
Annotation	The Social Security revenues anticipated in the US are inadequate to pay for benefits promised under current law. Therefore, some combination of revenue increase and/or benefit decrease is inevitable. This article describes the demographic changes behind these long-run fiscal problems. It discusses the types of Social Security reform plans that have been proposed - from market changes to the current system's parameters, to radical reform through privatisation. The article reviews the goals of Social Security, and discusses the pros and cons of significant privatisation. The author concludes that privatisation is definitely not required to save Social Security (far more traditional approaches can do that), and that we should be very careful about radically changing a programme that is so important to most older Americans' economic well-being, and that has been so successful and popular for more than 60 years. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-030811001 A
Classmark	TYA: TM2: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.