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| SSP No. 33 |
February 24, 2004 |
Social Security Choices for the 21st-Century Woman
by Leanne Abdnor
Leanne Abdnor, former vice president for external affairs at the Cato Institute, is president of For Our
Grandchildren, a grassroots advocacy organization that supports Social Security reform. She was a member
of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security.
Executive Summary
Since 1935 millions of elderly Americans
have relied on Social Security for their retirement
income. However, the program is now
both structurally and financially unable to meet
the needs of today's workers, especially
women.
Although there has been much public attention
paid to Social Security's looming financial
crisis, even more important to women may be
the clash between the current benefit structure
and the socioeconomic changes that have
occurred since 1935, such as the great increase
in the number of women in the workforce,
women marrying later or not at all, and the doubling
of the divorce rate. By failing to keep pace
with the changing nature of American families,
Social Security's outdated benefit structure
results in single women and dual-earner couples
subsidizing the benefits of wealthier single-earner couples, which creates a sharply
regressive element to the current benefit structure.
Social Security reform not only must restore
the system to solvency, it should also address
the program's other inequities that disadvantage
women. The best way to do this would be
to allow younger workers, including younger
women, to privately invest at least a portion of
their Social Security taxes through individual
accounts. Not only would individual accounts
help to solve Social Security's financial problems
by taking advantage of the higher returns
available to private capital investment, they
would give women greater ownership and control
of their retirement income and create a benefit
structure far more in tune with the needs of
the modern family.
Everyone who truly favors giving women
more choices and control over their own lives
should champion such a reform.
Index of Social Security Privatization Papers
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