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Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future
TABLE C-2 Projected Social Security Trust Fund Ratio, Selected Years, Current Law Compared with Options 1-4
the price level becoming more predominant as career earnings rise, up to the maximum subject to the Social Security payroll tax. As a result, the rate of increase in the preretirement benefits would usually be greatest for the lowest earners, and decrease with earnings, up to the payroll tax maximum, but to no less than the rate of price inflation.5
Increasing the future age for full and early retirement benefits accounts for a 0.56 percent increase in the balance.
Changing the cost-of-living adjustment to monthly benefits in retirement adds 0.36 percent to the balance.6
Option 2 gets roughly two-thirds of its effect by reducing benefit growth and one-third by payroll-tax increases. It improves the 75-year actuarial balance by 2.07 percent of payroll.
For the preretirement benefit formula, another form of progressive indexing is the only provision affecting benefits. It improves the
