Economic Security
Boosting economic security is grounded in the coordination of programs across four key policy pillars: Labor, Benefit, Protection, and Equity. This unique framework emphasizes the complexity of economic insecurity, its many drivers, and the need for an integrated, multifaceted approach to effectively address it. Learn more about the initiatives driving Pathways to Economic Security.
Economic Security for the 21st Century
This report provides an array of policy options to help achieve the noble vision of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1935 Committee on Economic Security: assuring “an adequate income to each human being in childhood, youth, middle age, or old age—in sickness or in health.”
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Older Workers Retirement Security
September, 2023
The Academy’s nonpartisan Older Workers Retirement Security Task Force provides policymakers with a broad range of policy options to improve retirement security for older workers in physically demanding jobs, but who do not currently qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or might qualify but struggle to access the benefits.
Disability Supports
September, 2022
This essay by Nicole LeBlanc, a disability policy advocate and self-advocate, discusses the ways that COVID-era stimulus checks and the closure of Social Security offices nationwide affected people with disabilities.
October, 2022
Rachel Good, senior policy adviser to Representative Steny Hoyer, led a virtual discussion on current Congressional priorities for disability policy and the impact disability caused by long-COVID will have on disability policy moving forward. The discussion included crucial input from stakeholders from the disability community.
Unemployment Insurance
September, 2022
This fact sheet addresses ways the unemployment insurance system is ill-structured to meet the unique needs of older workers and suggests potential reforms.
COVID-19 IMPACTS
August, 2022
This fact sheet looks at how the United States social insurance system performed during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and ways it might be strengthened. Includes four infographics about unemployment insurance, Medicare, and workers’ compensation.
May, 2021
This report of the COVID-19 Task Force Epidemiology Working Group provides projections of the COVID-19 pandemic’s trajectories and examines potential impacts on the nation’s social insurance programs.
Workers’ Compensation
May, 2022
The federal Black Lung Program provides benefits to workers with a variety of debilitating lung conditions resulting from work in coal mines. The program is currently deeply in debt, and the proportion of miners developing black lung disease has increased over the past 25 years. This Spotlight explores the forces driving increases in rates of black lung, why benefits are declining, and the program’s financial challenges.