Arriving in Fall 2025!

Will Americans in the future be able to count on Social Security? Unless the American people and our lawmakers are willing to implement equitable reforms soon, Social Security could become insolvent by 2033.

Americans have known for decades that Social Security needs economic adjustments. Unfortunately, making necessary corrections to this successful program has been called the “third rail” of American politics. Fear of political backlash makes elected leaders afraid to do what is necessary to uphold it. Yet without reforms, millions of soon-to-be-retired Americans—and future generations—could be negatively impacted.

Political inertia sometimes occurs because lawmakers and voters are focused solely on traditionally divisive solutions: cut benefits, raise the retirement age, increase taxes. Social Security for Future Generations presents new, previously overlooked, economically sound, and politically feasible solutions for reforming this vital program—in ways that are equitable for everyone.

It has been more than forty years since major reforms of Social Security. Since then, economic, demographic, and technological changes have made some aspects of the program, and some previously proposed reforms, outdated. These changes include increasing income inequality and changes in pension law that have contributed to: increasing inequality in assets held in pension plans; increasing inequality in life expectancy by income and education; the rise of defined contribution plans and the decline in defined benefit plans; and the development of new technologies for producing and disseminating information, including robo-advisors and artificial intelligence programs. These changes call for new thinking about Social Security.

Written by John A. Turner, a leading economist and scholar on Social Security and pensions, and senior research associate Serena E. McCarthy, this book is a practical guide designed to help lawmakers, academics, economists, and all concerned Americans initiate commonsense reforms to Social Security so that it lasts for generations to come.