Recent reports predict that, barring any changes, the Social Security program will become insolvent - no longer able to pay promised benefits in full - around the year 2030, well within the retirement years of the baby boom generation. The reports also predict that the trust fund will stop being a net contributor and will become instead a net claimant on the federal budget in the year 2013 - much earlier than previously thought. With the world population aging (in some areas quite rapidly), the increasing number of dependent senior citizens will become a major public policy issue that will have to be addressed continually over the next fifty years.
This conference took a fresh look at the questions essential to understanding the future of old-age protection under Social Security. Experts in economics, actuarial science, and public policy examined front-burner issues such as:
The conference concluded with an examination of social security programs around the world and posed critical questions about the furture direction of Social Security in the United States - questions that Congress and the American public will have to address in the coming years.
Conference Co-chairs:
Peter A. Diamond
Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David C. Lindeman
Pensions Specialist, The World Bank
Howard Young
Actuarial Consultant and Adjunct Professor of Mathematics, University of Michigan
A book of published proceedings, Social Security: What Role for the Future?, edited by Peter A. Diamond, David C. Lindeman, and Howard Young, is available through the Brookings Institution Press at 800-275-1447.
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