what changes have been made to the social security system from inception to date?

August 14, 1935-- President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill into law
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Fifty Years of Social Security
by Martha A. McSteen
Interim Commissioner of Social Security

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The author wishes to admit the help provided by the following members of the Social Security Administration's Function of Legislative and Regulatory Policy: Peggy S. Fisher, Manager, and Timothy K. Evans, and Richard 50. Griffiths, staff, of the Division of Retirement and Survivors Benefits.

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Today, nosotros gloat the 50th anniversary of the Federal social insurance program, now known simply as "Social Security," that emerged in 1935 equally office of the Nation's response to the plight of its elderly. The Social Security program of the 1980's is the directly descendent of the limited programme of contributory one-time-historic period benefits enacted in 1935. The programme, which today covers nigh all jobs, continues to have sure basic characteristics found in the original program; that is, eligibility is earned through work in covered jobs, participation is by and large compulsory, the amount of the benefits is related to covered earnings, the program is intended to provide a base of protection, and benefits are financed primarily through defended payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers.

Yet, while the program fundamentals have remained the same over 5 decades, much has changed. As American work and life patterns accept changed, and so too Social Security has been adapted to meet current expectations. The legislative history of the plan, described briefly below, shows clearly how Social Security has retained its essential characteristics equally information technology has evolved to continue pace with the times.

Foundations of Change

By the terminate of the Commencement World War, a primarily agrarian American social club had become a primarily urban, industrialized one. Thus, on the eve of the Great Depression of the 1930'due south, a larger proportion of the American people were dependent on greenbacks wages for their support than ever before. By 1932, even so, unemployment reached 34 percent of the nonagricultural workforce. Between 1929 and 1932, national income dropped past 43 pct, per capita income by 19 per centum. By the mid-1930'southward, the lifetime savings of millions of people had been wiped out.

For vast numbers of aged people, and people nearing old age, the loss of their savings brought with it the prospect of living their remaining years in destitution. At the height of the Depression, many old people were literally penniless. One-third to one-half of the aged were dependent on family or friends for support. The poor houses and other relief agencies that existed at the time to assist people who had fallen on hard times were financed mainly from charity and local funds. They could not begin--either financially or conceptually--to respond adequately to the special needs of the aged brought nearly by the cataclysmic events of the Depression.

Before Social Security, many people faced destitution in sometime historic period

Although by 1934, 30 States had responded by providing pensions for the needy aged, total expenditures for Country programs for the aged that year were $31 million--an average of $xix.74 a month per aged person. As the Depression worsened, benefits to individuals were cut further to enable States to spread bachelor funds among as many people as possible.

Various national schemes to provide income to the aged received substantial attention. These included the Townsend Quondam-Age Revolving Pension Plan and a plan called "Share the Wealth" advanced by Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long.

Under the Townsend programme, every American over age 60 was to get a monthly pension, provided he or she did not piece of work and promised to spend the entire payment during the month. Under Long'southward plan, large personal fortunes would be liquidated to finance (1) pensions for the aged and (2) cash payments to every family sufficient to purchase a home, a machine, and radio.

Due in large part to the public and congressional pressures for some Federal response to the cluttered conditions of the time, in June 1934, a Committee on Economical Security was established by Executive Guild of President Franklin Roosevelt. This Cabinet-level Committee, chaired by Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor, was given the task of developing constructive, long-term proposals for the prevention of all the major causes of economic insecurity. Given the desperate weather of the time, the Committee's major attention was focused on programs to protect the unemployed. All the same, among some controversy about the feasibility and constitutionality of such a program, at that place developed from the work of the Commission a proposal for compulsory, contributory old-age insurance, which was ultimately enacted as part of the Social Security Human action.

The Social Security Act, enacted on August 14, 1935, provided a new federally administered system of social insurance for the aged financed through payroll taxes paid past employees and their employers. Under the organization, which practical only to workers in commerce and manufacture, people would earn retirement do good eligibility as they worked. With some exceptions, benefits would be related to workers' average covered earnings, and workers could not have earnings and yet be eligible for benefits. No benefits were provided for spouses or children, and lump-sum refunds were provided to the estates of workers who died earlier historic period 65 or before receiving at least the equivalent in benefits of their taxes plus interest. Collection of payroll taxes began in 1937, and benefit payments were scheduled to begin in 1942.

The Early Years

Even as the Social Security legislation moved through the Congress in the belatedly wintertime and spring of 1935, it was acknowledged by many supporters that the former-historic period program then under consideration was merely a first step in providing comprehensive protection for American workers against loss of earnings. President Roosevelt, in signing the Social Security Bill into law noted that "This law, as well, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is existence built only is past no means complete." In May 1937 the month in which the one-time-historic period program survived a crucial constitutional test in the landmark Helvering v. Davis case (in which the employer Social Security payroll tax was found constitutional), the Senate Committee on Finance and the Social Security Lath jointly appointed an Informational Council on Social Security. This exterior advisory group, which would be the first of many to written report and make recommendations apropos Social Security over the years,* was instructed to written report possible ways of making the programme more fully effective sooner than contemplated nether the 1935 law.

(* Appointment of outside advisory bodies has long been institutionalized as a tradition in Social Security policymaking. Numerous advisory bodies have met over the years, and most of the changes made in Social Security have been based in large function on their studies and recommendations. The law has since 1956 required periodic appointment of Advisory Councils.)

The Quango's fundamental finding was an endorsement of contributory sometime-age insurance as a way of preventing dependency in erstwhile age and thereby reducing reliance on needs-tested assistance. Further, the Council recommended a benefit structure that, in addition to basic benefits for workers, would provide protection for aged wives, widows, and surviving children starting in 1940.

Based on the Advisory Council'southward recommendations and recognizing the heavy dependence of most families on the male wage earner at that time, the Congress, in 1939, enacted legislation that eliminated lump-sum payroll revenue enhancement refunds and provided benefits for aged wives and widows, young children of retired and deceased workers, young widows caring for a child beneficiary, and dependent parents of retired and deceased workers.

Unemployment affected many families during the Great Low of the 1930s

The Commission on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Senate Committee on Finance, in their reports on the 1939 amendments, reasoned that "Under a social-insurance plan the principal purpose is to pay benefits in accordance with the probable needs of the beneficiaries rather than to make payments to the estate of a deceased person regardless of whether or non he leaves dependents."

The 1939 legislation also provided a new method of calculating benefits, based on average monthly earnings instead of on cumulative wages. The net upshot of the 1939 amendments was to increase the annual cost of benefits payable during the early on years and to subtract the annual toll of benefits payable during later years. Over the long range, the average annual price of benefits remained about the same as nether prior constabulary.

In addition to these changes in benefits, the 1939 amendments made basic changes in the financing of the Social Security program by establishing the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and by changing the size of the financial reserves held by the program. The provisions of prior police force would have resulted in the aggregating of a huge reserve fund over the years, similar to the reserves built up past individual pension plans. The new legislation was designed to constrain the aggregating of reserves and, in result, to move the financing of the program toward "pay-as-you-go" financing. This change in the reserve concept allowed the immediate payment of benefits to retired workers and to their dependents and survivors without increasing Social Security taxation rates. This modify in financing too permitted a 3-year postponement of the increases in the Social Security tax rate that had been scheduled for 1940.

Other recommendations of the 1938 Council that were enacted in 1939 included:

• Provision for benefits to outset in 1940 instead of 1942;
• Revision of the earnings test, allowing earnings of $fourteen.99 a month before benefits were withheld; and
• A method of measuring whether an private had worked long enough in covered employment to go a do good--based on "quarters of coverage" the measure on which today's methods are based.

Following implementation of the 1939 amendments, the bones Social Security program was in place. Information technology would remain essentially unchanged over the 1940's as the Nation concentrated its efforts on fighting World War II and toward edifice a good for you post-war economy. Social Security legislation enacted during these years included further postponement of revenue enhancement rate increases, minor changes in coverage, and provision for coordinating the survivor benefits payable under the Social Security and Railroad Retirement Acts. Still, Social Security grew in importance both to the aged and to the economy. The number of beneficiaries grew from most 222,000 at the terminate of 1940 to over 3 1000000 in 1949. Boilerplate monthly benefits grew only slightly, however--from $22.60 for a retired worker in 1940 to $26 at the end of the decade-- less than the charge per unit of inflation.

The Informational Council on Social Security, 1937-1938

The Mail service-State of war Era By the end of the immediate post-war flow, Social Security had arrived at a major crossroads.

• The purchasing power of benefits had been sharply reduced by aggrandizement. (Past 1950, the cost of living had risen by iii-quarters since 1939.)
• There was growing recognition that, as the Committee on Economical Security had pointed out, the hazards of economic insecurity due to disability were at least as great as the hazards faced by retirees.
• The plan had non reduced the demand for public help among older persons. On the contrary, the percentage of the aged receiving old-historic period aid was somewhat larger (22.5) in 1950 than it had been in 1940 (21.7).

To aid it determine the advisable ongoing role of social insurance in the Nation's income back up system, in 1947, the Senate Committee on Finance named an Informational Council on Social Security. The findings of this Quango formed a major milestone in the history of Social Security by reaffirming in the post-Low era the social insurance principles established in the 1930's. In the Introduction to its report, the Council said:

"Opportunity for the private to secure protection for himself and his family confronting the economical hazards of old age and decease is essential to the sustained welfare, freedom, and dignity of the American citizen. For some, such protection can be gained through private savings and other private arrangements. For others, such arrangements are inadequate or too uncertain. Since the involvement of the whole Nation is involved, the people, using the Government equally the agency for their cooperation, should make sure that all members of the community have at to the lowest degree a bones measure out of protection against the major hazards of old historic period and death."

With respect to the existing sometime-age and survivors insurance (OASI) programme, the Council was unanimous in finding three major deficiencies: inadequate coverage; unduly restrictive eligibility requirements for older workers; and inadequate benefits. To remedy these issues, the Council recommended a general do good increase; a doubling of the minimum benefit; provision of benefits for boosted dependents and survivors; and extension of coverage beyond the original boundaries of commerce and industry to cocky-employed workers, farm and domestic workers, Federal civilian employees not under a retirement arrangement, State and local governmental employees, and employees of nonprofit organizations. In order to provide more adequate benefits to workers in these groups who were already middle-aged or older when their jobs were offset covered, the Council recommended a "new-start" benefit computation. The 1948 Advisory Quango also strongly recommended extension of the social insurance approach to provide a program of greenbacks benefits to the permanently and totally disabled. The program recommended by the Quango would pay benefits afterwards a half-dozen-month waiting period simply to those with astringent and long-lasting disabilities, would provide for expenditures of Social Security funds for rehabilitation of disabled workers, and would terminate benefits to workers who refused to accept physical examinations or rehabilitation. As its first order of business, in 1950, the Congress addressed the erosion in the value of Social Security benefits due to the inflation that had occurred since the inception of the program. The 1950 amendments provided for full general benefit increases and increases in the minimum benefit that amounted to an across-the-board increase of nigh 77 percentage. Echoing the view of the 1948 Advisory Council with respect to the ongoing role for the Social Security system, the Senate Committee on Finance said in its report of the 1950 amendments:

"Your commission's impelling business organisation in recommending passage of [this bill] has been to accept immediate, effective steps to cut down the demand for further expansion of public assistance, specially quondam-age assistance. . .We believe that improvement of the American social-security system should exist in the direction of preventing dependency before it occurs and of providing more effective income protection, free from the humiliation of a test of need. . ."

To finance this substantial benefit increase and other program improvements, the 1950 amendments increased the contribution and benefit base (the amount of almanac wages subject to Social Security taxes and creditable for benefits) from $3,000 to $3,600 and provided a revised schedule of gradually increasing tax rates for employers, employees, and the newly covered self-employed. The new police also repealed a never-used provision which authorized appropriations to the programme from full general revenues if they were needed. These changes made clear the Congress' rejection of Federal general revenues as a major source of Social Security financing and underscored its view that Social Security should be self-supporting in both the brusque range and the long range.

The Congress besides began in 1950 to focus on the coverage deficiencies identified past the 1948 Quango. These deficiencies, of class, had previously been recognized past the framers of the original law. At the inception of Social Security, at that place had been most unanimous understanding among supporters of the social insurance concept that, in order to assure acceptable protection to the greatest number of workers, coverage should be both compulsory and as nearly universal every bit possible. Universal, compulsory coverage was besides looked upon equally the all-time means of spreading the toll of the program over the largest possible group, and thus fugitive problems of agin pick and windfall benefits.

As noted earlier, the 1935 Act provided compulsory coverage for workers in commerce and industry; initially, about half dozen in 10 jobs were covered. Coverage was non extended to other jobs for a number of reasons. Administrative considerations prevented quick development of methods of collecting taxes and providing coverage for the cocky-employed and for farm workers. Some groups, primarily railroad workers and Federal employees, already had retirement systems. In improver, legal and constitutional concerns involving revenue enhancement of States and localities prevented firsthand extension of coverage to employees of State and local governments.

By 1950, with a decade of experience under the Social Security program behind them, the Congress ended that many of the obstacles to universal coverage were not as formidable as they had appeared at the commencement. Thus, legislation enacted in 1950 extended coverage to several major categories of workers, including regularly employed subcontract and domestic workers; non-subcontract cocky-employed persons (except professionals); Federal civilian workers; and, at the election of employees and employers, State and local government employees not covered under another retirement program and employees of nonprofit organizations other than ministers.

Because many of the workers newly covered under the 1950 amendments were already middle-aged or older, the principle of enabling newly covered older workers to become insured more easily and making their benefits more comparable to those of other covered workers with like earnings was established. The 1950 amendments included a and so-called new-start benefit computation that based benefit amounts on earnings after 1950 and companion provisions for measuring insured condition in terms of work after 1950.

Four years later (in 1954), some other 10 million workers' jobs were covered; in 1956, another million were added. Social Security legislation enacted in 1954 and 1956 extended coverage to (amongst others) the subcontract self-employed, certain groups of professional self-employed (generally with the exception of physicians), members of the uniformed services, and Country and local government employees under a retirement organization, under various weather condition. Thus, by the mid-1950's, some twenty years after enactment of Social Security, the protection offered under the program was available to 90 percent of workers.

During the 1950's, the Congress also undertook lengthy consideration of another of the 1948 Advisory Council's recommendations--extension of Social Security protection to disabled workers.

The House-passed version of the 1950 Social Security Amendments would accept provided for a program of inability insurance along the lines recommended by the Council, just the final bill fabricated no such provision. Instead, the 1950 amendments provided for extension of the Land-Federal public assistance plan to the permanently and totally disabled, as had been urged by a minority of the Advisory Council's members.

Later, in 1954, the Congress enacted a disability "freeze" provision. No cash disability benefits were payable under this provision, but workers who were permanently and totally disabled and who as well met insured status tests could have their Social Security earnings records frozen as of the engagement of their disability. Through the "freeze" provision, disabled workers could foreclose their retirement benefits from being diluted by many years of no earnings. Other provisions of the 1954 amendments provided for expansion of State vocational rehabilitation programs to address the hard problem of rehabilitating the severely disabled.

Eight years after the 1948 Advisory Council had recommended it, Congress in 1956 established a cash disability insurance program--with benefits first payable in 1957--with essentially the same eligibility requirements passed by the Firm in 1950. Because of business about the high costs of a disability plan and potential corruption, withal, benefits were payable only to workers who were at least l years old. These amendments established basic principles under which the disability programme continues to operate today:

• "Disability" is defined as the inability to engage in substantial gainful activeness (prior to legislation in 1965, permanent disability was required; the 1965 legislation provided the present-law requirement that the disability exist expected to last at to the lowest degree 12 months or exist expected to event in death); Disability must be established on the basis of objective medical bear witness; Eligibility is based on both elapsing and recency of work in covered employment;
• Benefits are paid only afterward a waiting flow;
• A proportion of Social Security funds may be spent for rehabilitation of disabled workers; and
• Workers who refuse to accept physical examinations or rehabilitation may lose their benefits.

In 1958, the insured status requirements for disability benefits were relaxed through emptying of the currently insured condition requirement and benefits were extended to spouses and children of disabled workers. Ii years later, the minimum age requirement for disabled workers was eliminated and a trial work catamenia provision added to encourage disabled workers to return to piece of work.

The 1960'south

By 1960, then, the former-age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) programs were substantially in place as we know them today. Coverage under the program had been fabricated nearly universal, so that virtually all people reaching retirement age in the decades to come would exist able to found do good eligibility. Over the 1960's, the OASDI programs were refined through legislation to create new categories of beneficiaries, to increase benefits so as to maintain their purchasing power, and to adjust taxation rates to assure adequate plan financing. Moreover, legislation enacted in 1961 lowered the historic period of benefit eligibility for men. When the Social Security plan was established, benefits were made available to men and women at historic period 65. The Social Security Amendments of 1956 had provided benefits for women equally early on every bit age 62. Benefits received prior to historic period 65 were reduced to take account of the longer menses over which they would be received. The 1961 amendments extended eligibility for reduced benefits to include men.

In its examination of the adequacy of Social Security protection for the aged and the disabled, the 1965 Informational Quango came to the conclusion "that cash benefits solitary are not plenty." In its report, the Council said that:

"Monthly cash benefits, if adequate, can meet regularly recurring expenses such every bit those for food, clothing and shelter, but [they] are not a practical fashion to meet the problem that the aged and disabled face in the high and unpredictable costs of wellness care, costs that may run into the thousands of dollars for some and amount to very lilliputian for others. Security in sometime age and during disability requires the combination of a cash benefit and insurance against a substantial part of the costs of expensive disease."

The Quango establish in role that, while health care expenditures for the aged were twice equally high every bit those of younger people, the keen majority of the anile were neither well-off nor had adequate health insurance. Further, they found that, by the 1960's, the inability of the aged to meet wellness care costs had become the single nearly important reason that older people practical for public assistance. Based on these findings, the Quango recommended establishment of a program to provide, through a contributory social insurance mechanism, protection against the costs of infirmary and related inpatient services for aged and disabled. In order to protect people who were already onetime, the Council recommended that hospital insurance protection be provided initially without regard to insured status; that is, that people at or near retirement historic period exist thou-fathered into the new program.

Even as the Quango was coming together, the Congress was actively considering proposals to provide health insurance benefits. In 1965, the Congress passed "Medicare" legislation, which, while it essentially embodied the Advisory Council's recommendations, differed in 2 major respects. Beginning, in improver to providing protection against hospital costs through a payroll taxation financed hospital insurance (How-do-you-do) program, the program enacted likewise included a voluntary program to be financed through monthly premiums and Federal general revenues. This supplementary medical insurance (SMI) program was designed to meet the costs of physicians' services and other outpatient care. Second, only people aged 65 and over, rather than both the aged and disabled, would be eligible for Medicare. (A few years later, in 1972, Medicare protection was extended to people who had been receiving cash inability benefits for 24 months or more.)

The Last 15 Years

With the advent of Medicare, the trunk of programs which we refer to today as "Social Security" was complete. All the same, while there have been no major additions to the organisation over the last 15 years or so, there has been continuing public and congressional reassessment of the ongoing role of Social Security in the Nation's income support construction. For instance, the 1975 Advisory Council on Social Security firmly endorsed the bones purposes and principles of the plan, noting that:

"The earnings-related OASDI program should remain the Nation'southward primary means of providing economic security in the issue of retirement, decease, or disability. It should be supplemented by effective individual pensions, individual insurance, savings, and other investments; and it should be undergirded by constructive ways-tested programs. Time to come changes in OASDI should conform to the primal principles of the program: universal compulsory coverage, earnings-related benefits paid without a test of need, and contributions toward the toll of the program from covered workers and employers."

With respect to the OASDI programs, legislative considerations over these years have focused on three fundamental issues:

• Maintaining the value of benefits over fourth dimension;
• Assuring the financial soundness of the organization; and
• Structuring the disability program so equally to maintain its responsiveness to the needs of the disabled while curbing the potential for abuse.

As noted earlier, the Congress acted to increase benefits from time to time during the 1950's and 1960's. Nevertheless, there was business organization that during the intervals between these ad hoc do good increases, inflation eroded the purchasing power of benefits. The 1971 Advisory Council examined this result and recommended that Social Security benefits be adapted automatically to keep stride with increases in prices. The Council said:

"An automatic adjustments system would, the Council believes, give to both present and futurity beneficiaries a greater sense of security than would exist if a benefit increase tin can take identify only after an activeness by the Congress. Beneficiaries would be assured, by virtue of an explicit provision in the law, that the purchasing power of their benefits would non deteriorate considering of inflation."

In order to clinch that Social Security would provide a consistent level of protection to workers over time as earnings levels rose, and to restrain payroll tax rates equally benefit levels increased, the Quango further recommended that the contribution and do good base exist increased automatically to reverberate earnings growth. In conjunction with these recommendations, the Council as well recommended that actuarial price estimates for the program be based on assumptions that earnings levels would rise over time.* The Quango also reaffirmed the view of prior Councils that the program should exist financed on a electric current-cost basis in the near term and advocated frank recognition of this policy in longer-range financial planning.

(* Before 1972, actuarial estimates of program costs over the long range were based on level cost assumptions--that is, it was assumed that wage and cost levels, as well every bit do good levels, would remain unchanged over the 75-twelvemonth valuation catamenia. As wages did in fact increase, surpluses accumulated that could exist and were used to finance benefit increases.)

In 1972, the Congress approved legislation that established automated cost-of-living adjustments (COLA'southward) in benefits based on price increases as measured by the Consumer Price Alphabetize and provided for automatically increasing the maximum corporeality of earnings covered under the system. Moreover, the payroll revenue enhancement schedule adopted in 1972 reflected the 1971 Council's recommendations with respect to both the basis for 75-year cost estimates and current-cost financing. Soon after the automated COLA provision took outcome, it became evident that combining the automatic-indexing procedures with the existing benefit table resulted in a computation process that, because it took into account both wage and price increases, unduly increased benefits for workers who would retire in the future. This overcompensation resulted in toll projections which showed that the taxation rates scheduled in the law would exist inadequate to run across the long-range costs of the program.

Based on the recommendations of the 1975 Informational Council, the Congress in 1977 addressed the issues by establishing a new "decoupled" do good-computation formula for workers becoming newly eligible or dying after 1978. Under the new formula, which replaced the benefit table in the law, initial benefits are increased to reflect increases in boilerplate wages earlier workers reach retirement historic period, and the purchasing ability of benefits is guaranteed after retirement through cost-of-living increases.

At the time that the 1977 amendments were enacted, it was thought that, due to the lower long-range costs resulting from the new do good formula, changes the Congress made in the tax charge per unit schedule would exist adequate to finance benefit payments well into the adjacent century. Still, over the next few years, the Nation experienced a menses of spiraling inflation and high unemployment along with low or negative existent wage growth. These worse-than-expected economical conditions created a two-pronged bleed on Social Security in the brusque term.

• Do good expenditures were pushed up chop-chop past high inflation, while payroll taxes went upwardly more slowly considering of the relatively slower growth in wages; and
• High unemployment reduced payroll taxes.

In improver, new long-range projections showed that the decline in the nascence charge per unit and the likelihood of increased life expectancy would both have negative effects on Social Security; in the 21st century, fewer workers would be paying taxes and retirees would be receiving benefits longer.

Due to these problems, it shortly became articulate that without significant further congressional activeness, the OASI Trust Fund would exist unable to pay benefits on time past some point in the 1980'due south. Thus, in Dec 1981, President Reagan announced the germination of the National Commission on Social Security Reform (NCSSR) "to work with the President and the Congress to reach ii specific goals: propose realistic, long-term reform to put social security back on a audio fiscal ground and forge a working bipartisan consensus so that the necessary reforms volition be passed into law."

The NCSSR reported on January xx, 1983. Based on the recommendations of the NCSSR, the Congress enacted the and so-chosen "bipartisan compromise" 1983 amendments. This package of provisions was designed to resolve the financing crisis by sharing the brunt among affected groups, present and future. Among the major provisions of the 1983 legislation that became effective in the well-nigh term were:

• Advances in tax charge per unit increases already scheduled in the law for employees and employers;
• Permanent increases in self-employment tax rates;
• Delays in the effective date of automated COLA'south in benefits from June to December of each year; and
• Inclusion of up to half of benefits in taxable income for sure loftier-income beneficiaries (and appropriation of the resulting revenues to the trust funds).

In the long range, in recognition of improvements in longevity, the 1983 amendments provided for gradually increasing the age of eligibility for unreduced retirement benefits. Workers born after 1937 will be the first to be afflicted by this modify; the provision will exist fully effective for workers born after 1959, for whom unreduced benefits will be available at age 67. Benefits volition continue to be available at historic period 62, but the reduction in benefits at age 62 will increase every bit the age of eligibility for unreduced benefits increases.

As a result of enactment of the 1983 legislation, OASDI benefits tin can be paid on time in the curt run and well into the next century on the basis of fifty-fifty the most pessimistic economic and demographic assumptions used by the Social Security Trustees in making projections. During the 1990'south, current projections show, substantial excesses of income over outgo will replenish programme reserves and build up substantial trust funds. After the turn of the century, programme costs will ascension essentially as the babe blast generation reaches retirement age, and utilise of trust fund avails will be necessary.

With the enactment of the 1983 amendments, which bodacious the soundness of the Social Security system both through the 1980'southward and well into the 21st century, the Congress once again reaffirmed its commitment to the use of the social insurance mechanism equally the Nation'due south starting time line of defence against dependency in old historic period, disability, or upon the death of a worker.

During the past decade and a half, the disability insurance programme has also undergone substantial change. During the early 1970'southward, the disability insurance (DI) program began to experience tremendous growth. As the decade unfolded, it became articulate that continuing rapid growth in the DI program was beginning to pose a serious threat to the DI Trust Fund. Studies aimed at discovering the causes of the unexpected growth in the inability programme suggested that (1) the casher rolls included many ineligibles, and (2) the plan construction tended to discourage people who might exist able to return to work from doing and then.

The Social Security Disability Amendments of 1980 included a limit on monthly family disability benefits, additional work incentive provisions, and administrative improvements, including mandatory reviews, at to the lowest degree once every iii years, of the standing eligibility of disabled beneficiaries whose disabilities are not necessarily permanent. On the ground of these amendments, the financial solvency of the DI Trust Fund was restored, and, in fact, the trust fund was projected to increase rapidly afterwards 1981.

Presently after implementation of the 1980 amendments, however, the periodic review provision began to exist criticized by the public and Congress. Although, beginning in 1982, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services made many authoritative changes to deal with these criticisms, public and congressional attention remained fixed on the DI program, as advocacy groups for the disabled petitioned Congress for legislative relief. Throughout 1982 and 1983, amidst not bad controversy, the Congress considered a variety of reforms to mitigate the furnishings of the periodic review procedure.

These efforts culminated in the enactment of the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Human action of 1984. The major provisions are mandatory application of a medical improvement standard in continuing disability reviews, continuation of disability benefit payments during appeal of termination decisions, and a moratorium on reviews of cases involving mental impairments pending development of revised review criteria.

Conclusion

Today, 37 meg people get Social Security benefits of more than than $fifteen billion a month; OASDI benefits this year volition total $188 billion. In 1985, nearly 122 1000000 people will work in employment covered under Social Security, which applies today to 95 percentage of all jobs in our economy.

As a Nation, we can take item pride in having made the Social Security program the most successful domestic plan in our history. Over the years, Social Security has been a vital correspondent to the security of virtually all Americans. Today, 50 years after its inception, it remains the foundation of well-being for us in our later on years or if we are disabled and for our families if we die before retirement.

Ida May Fuller, who became Social Security's showtime beneficiary in 1940	Ernest Ackerman, who received the beginning Social Security lump-sum payment in 1937

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Source: https://www.ssa.gov/history/50mm2.html

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