(Editor’s Note: This story is part of a partnership between 下一个大道 and 追逐梦想这是一个关于贫困和机会的公共媒体倡议.)
We all know the Social Security system needs reforming to keep it solvent so Americans will continue receiving their promised benefits. 但 Social Security also could be improved to better assist the economically vulnerable.
A recent paper from the Center for 退休 Research (CRR) at Boston College discusses policy proposals that could do this by helping widows, 最老的老人和低收入者. 我采访了Alicia Munnell, 该中心的主任, 更多地了解为什么需要它们, how they’d work and whether we might see them implemented.
改善寡妇福利
目前, a wife is entitled to two types of Social Security benefits: 1) a spouse’s benefit that will, 正如CRR报告所言, “top up” her own retirement benefit to 50% of what Social Security calls her husband’s Primary Insurance Amount and 2) a widow’s benefit that will equal 100% of her deceased husband’s benefit if it exceeds her own worker benefit.
福布斯上还有:
翻译过来就是:对于一个人挣钱的夫妇, the widow’s benefit would equal 67% of the total benefits the household received when both spouses were alive. For a two-earner couple with equal earnings, the widow would get just 50% of the total benefits. “That’s viewed as a big cut when a spouse dies,” said Munnell.
一项受欢迎的提案——在2017年共和党众议员的一项法案中. 艾尔·劳森(佛罗里达州民主党人.) — would increase the widow benefit to 75% of the amount the household received when both members of the couple were still alive. In order to target the higher benefit to low-income widows, the proposal would typically limit the dollar amount of the increased widow benefit to the amount received by a worker-beneficiary with average earnings.
另一种更慷慨的说法, 蒙内尔的报告说, would give a widow 100% of her own Social Security benefit and 75% of her deceased spouse’s benefit.
帮助老人
Financial vulnerability tends to worsen for retirees when they reach 85 and older, 因为医疗费用和长期护理费用. 这已经, 并将, become even more true with the disappearance of private pensions and increased longevity, 需要更多的人让他们的钱用得更久. The CRR report mentions two proposals aimed at protecting the “oldest old.”
目前, Social Security boosts benefits annually with Cost of Living Adjustments in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). 但, Munnell说, the CPI “dramatically understates inflation for the elderly due to health care costs.结果是, 她指出, “the real purchasing power of Social Security benefits declines over time, 如果你活得很长, 它以一种有意义的方式衰落.”
One proposal would revise Social Security’s inflation index to better represent health spending by the elderly. It would increase benefits yearly based on what’s known as the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, 或者CPI-E.
The other proposal would provide an automatic 5% increase in monthly Social Security benefits at age 85. The dollar amount of this increase would be limited to the average retired-worker benefit, 针对低收入人群的变化, 老的退休人员.
保护最低收入者
目前, workers with very low earnings over their careers are eligible for a special minimum Social Security benefit, 创建于1972年. This benefit was originally designed to keep “full-career” workers out of poverty in retirement. 但, the CRR report says, the benefit is “insufficient and is rapidly becoming irrelevant.”
Soon, the researchers say, no new retirees will receive it at all. A 2014 report from the Social Security Administration said the minimum benefit is projected to be “functionally obsolete” for retired workers beginning with those who will become eligible for benefits between 2017 and 2023.
为了解决这个问题, one proposal would increase the minimum benefit to 125% of the poverty level and adjust the initial benefit for the future by indexing it to wages (not prices as it is today). Under the present system, the minimum benefit isn’t growing enough to keep up with wages.
这些建议很有道理, 但在这个超级政治, strident era with a federal budget deficit projected to top $1 trillion in 2020 and Social Security’s solvency on the line, 我们有可能看到它们中的任何一个实现吗?
“It’s very hard for me to even conceive of people getting around the table right now to solve these problems,蒙内尔哀叹道。. “Clearly, the big issue [for Social Security] is that revenues will fall short of promised benefits. 但是当人们在房间里想出解决方案时, it would be nice to remedy some of these other outdated aspects of the program as well."
做出这些改变就不是 而不是 of solving Social Security’s solvency problem, Munnell noted. They would be “other problems to think about as you’re doing it,” she said.
The costs to make these changes for vulnerable Americans, Munnell说, are “relatively small.她补充说，没有一个是政治避雷针. She believes policymakers could fairly easily find offsets in the Social Security program to pay for them. 我们的目标, 太阳城网赌平台的太阳城官网人员说, is to find options for modernizing Social Security that would be both “effective and fiscally responsible.”
这个故事是我们与 《追逐梦想:美国的贫困与机遇这是一项公共媒体倡议. 主要资助由JPB基金会提供. 额外的资金由福特基金会提供.
