IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jpenef/v21y2022i3p344-358_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to pay for Social Security's Missing Trust Fund?

Author

Listed:
  • Munnell, Alicia H.
  • Hou, Wenliang
  • Sanzenbacher, Geoffrey T.

Abstract

Decisions made early in Social Security's history resulted in benefits in excess of contributions for early cohorts. This approach gave away the Trust Fund and the resulting interest that could have accumulated, which has increased the size of the payroll tax required to finance the program. This paper finds that, for the Old-Age and Survivors portion of Social Security, the Missing Trust Fund of $29.5 trillion is driven by the excess benefits given to early cohorts. Should tax increases be considered to improve the program's finances, a broad tax – such as the income tax – could be appropriate since these early payments benefitted all of society.

Suggested Citation

  • Munnell, Alicia H. & Hou, Wenliang & Sanzenbacher, Geoffrey T., 2022. "How to pay for Social Security's Missing Trust Fund?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(3), pages 344-358, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jpenef:v:21:y:2022:i:3:p:344-358_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1474747220000384/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jpenef:v:21:y:2022:i:3:p:344-358_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pef .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.