Social Security Finances: A Primer
Published: August 2008
Social Security Finances: A Primer is a PowerPoint presentation of 35 slides that provides factual background about Social Security, its benefits and finances. NASI's income security staff, led by Virginia Reno, Vice President for Income Security Policy, developed the slides to present briefings based on the 2008 report of the Social Security Trustees.
Topics covered include: Who gets Social Security? Who pays for it? What are typical Social Security benefits? How do benefits compare to earnings for retirees at different wage levels? How many older Americans receive employer-sponsored pensions? How are Social Security benefits projected to change in the future? What are the “best estimate” long-range projections of Social Security finances? What do the high-cost and low-cost projections show? Why will Social Security cost more in the future? How many workers support each beneficiary, now and in the future? How many people does each worker support, now, in the past and in the future? How big is Social Security's financial shortfall as a share of the total economy? Why is that different from the deficit as a share of Social Security taxable wages? How big is the Social Security shortfall compared to other important fiscal policy changes? What tradeoffs do policymakers face?
Interested users can download the PowerPoint presentation and can sort the slides in a different order or pick and choose a subset to use for particular purposes. The presentation includes talking points that go with each slide. To view the talking points, please save the document on your computer, then go to View > Notes Page. The sources for the factual material are in the references.
The Word version includes both the slides and the notes pages that go with them on the same page.
Topics covered include: Who gets Social Security? Who pays for it? What are typical Social Security benefits? How do benefits compare to earnings for retirees at different wage levels? How many older Americans receive employer-sponsored pensions? How are Social Security benefits projected to change in the future? What are the “best estimate” long-range projections of Social Security finances? What do the high-cost and low-cost projections show? Why will Social Security cost more in the future? How many workers support each beneficiary, now and in the future? How many people does each worker support, now, in the past and in the future? How big is Social Security's financial shortfall as a share of the total economy? Why is that different from the deficit as a share of Social Security taxable wages? How big is the Social Security shortfall compared to other important fiscal policy changes? What tradeoffs do policymakers face?
Interested users can download the PowerPoint presentation and can sort the slides in a different order or pick and choose a subset to use for particular purposes. The presentation includes talking points that go with each slide. To view the talking points, please save the document on your computer, then go to View > Notes Page. The sources for the factual material are in the references.
The Word version includes both the slides and the notes pages that go with them on the same page.
