Poll Shows No Decline in Support for Individual Accounts After September 11
December 10, 2001
By a margin of 64 to 31 percent, Americans support allowing
workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in
individual accounts, according to a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll.
That support remains virtually unchanged from earlier this year,
despite the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent
volatility in the stock market.
Similar results show up in a survey by Greenwald Associates
for Strong Capital Management, Inc. Approximately 61 percent of
American workers supported individual accounts, while only 33
percent were opposed. Nearly 65 percent of the survey respondents
said their opinion of Social Security privatization had not been affected by the events of September 11 and the economic slowdown
that followed. In fact, 20 percent said the recent economic slowdown
has made them more supportive of changes to Social Security.
The survey also showed that one of the important pro-reform
messages may have already taken hold. Participants showed little
faith in the current Social Security system. Fifty-seven percent of the
681 survey participants think that the existing Social Security system
is unsound.
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