Working Women Support Individual Retirement Accounts

September 13, 1999

A new nationwide poll conducted for the Cato Institute by Zogby International shows that a large majority of working women—60.1 percent—prefer that people be able to invest their Social Security taxes in privately owned retirement accounts. Men support privatization by virtually the same majority—61.6 percent. Overall, women favored giving people the choice of having a private investment option by a plurality, 48.6 to 35.5 percent. The survey of 1,205 voters nationwide was conducted from July 29 to August 2, 1999, and the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Overall, the Zogby poll found that, by a margin of 54.9 to 31.4 percent, Americans prefer changing the Social Security system to allow people to choose to put their payroll taxes in individual accounts similar to IRAs or 401(k) plans. Large pluralities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents favor allowing people to invest Social Security taxes in individual accounts. All three groups are more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress or president who supports privatization in the 2000 elections.

The survey also found that all age groups, other than those 65 and older, consider the current Social Security system more risky than private investments because they believe the government will not be able to pay all the benefits it has promised.

Among racial groups, minorities turned out to favor private investment even more than whites: 57.8 percent of blacks want to be able to invest at least part of their money; Hispanics, 60.6 percent; and non-Hispanic whites, 54.0 percent.

And although union leaders have waged a heavy campaign against privatization, 53.8 percent of union workers supported transforming Social Security into a system of individual accounts. Only 30.8 percent of union workers opposed privatization. These numbers were nearly identical with those for the population at large. Born-again Christians supported privatization by 52.1 to 34.0 percent.

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