In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began exploratory data collection for the School Pension Survey (SPS). The SPS is a new data collection of elementary/secondary school teacher pension data collected at the school district level. The SPS was developed primarily in response to public demand for data on teacher and other…

Today, nine out of 10 Americans age 65 and older depend on Social Security benefits to lead a comfortable and secure retirement. Among all Americans over age 65, Social Security makes up more than half of their household income. This brief outlines the history of Social Security benefits in the public sector, describes the safe harbor rule and how…

Purpose: As part of an ongoing effort to analyze the distributional implications of potential policy reforms to the U.S. Social Security system, we consider the widely discussed reform of earnings sharing. Such an approach has been viewed as a way to "update" Social Security's family benefits based on marital status and as a means to…

Purpose: This study compared the official poverty rate for adults aged 65 years and older with alternative measures that portray the true resources and needs of older adults. Design and Methods: The analysis used data from the 2004 Health and Retirement Study on income, assets, in-kind transfers, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. It also…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

Fefferman argues that mandatory Social Security coverage for teachers and other government employees assures their own pension protection and equalizes their contributions with their potential Social Security benefits. Brundige feels that teachers already have superior retirement plans and should not be forced to bail out the ailing Social…

Discusses the reasons for considering integration of Social Security benefits into the company pension plan and the approaches to and methods of integration, and how they apply to various types of plans. (Editor/TA)

Concern over Social Security's forecasted long-run deficit is occurring at a time when the program has a short-term surplus. One proposed strategy to address this forecasted deficit is to allow the investment of a portion of payroll taxes into private savings accounts (PSAs). The author analyzes recent proposals for PSAs and concludes that PSAs…

This Technical Committee Report examines four tiers of retirement income: (1) social security; (2) private and public occupational pension programs; (3) income from assets and savings; and (4) needs-tested programs. A summary of principal findings and recommendations is followed by three sections discussing the statistical basis for this report.…

The social security system in the United States is becoming increasingly unstable, as the amount of benefits paid to an ever larger number of retirees grows and the number of younger workers paying taxes to the system decreases. The problem will become especially acute in the years 2011 and after, as the members of the "baby boom"…

Texarkana (Texas) Community College and Texarkana Independent School District left the federal Social Security System (SSS) and reallocated SSS funds to a self-administered fringe benefit program, while also returning employees' SSS contributions to them intact. Several safeguards for Texas employees were already in place through the Texas Teacher…

A study analyzed the changing nature of older persons in the labor force, factors that may affect their work decisions, and policy changes that could facilitate their continuation or reentry into the work force beyond the normal retirement age. Data examined during the survey indicate that while the number of people aged 65 and older is continuing…

This report begins by recognizing that Australia's recent immigration, fertility, and mortality trends have resulted in a rapid increase not only in the numbers of older Australians but also in their proportion of the total population. After briefly reviewing the contemporary demographic aging of Australia's population and its likely course over…

Social workers understand that assessing the implications of a policy for individual citizens like Veronica, a 51 year-old African American woman whose retirement will be jeopardized by President Bush's plan for social security, is often a good yardstick by which to measure the impact of a change. Moreover, social workers understand that policy…

This statistical handbook contains 378 tables and charts illustrating the changes in the United States' aging population based on data collected during the 1990 census and several other surveys. The tables and charts are organized by topic as follows: demographics (age and sex distribution, life expectancy, race and ethnicity, geographic…