Proponents of cuts to Social Security have argued that longer lifespans in the US make the program unsustainable over the long-run.
President Obama, for example, argued in 2010 that Social Security “has to be tweaked because the population is getting older.” In 2013, he proposed cuts to retirement benefits through a payment calculation called “chained CPI” (he dropped the push in 2014).
But a study published on Monday shows that the good health isn’t trickling down. The amount of Social Security benefits actually received by the most vulnerable Americans is obscured by the statistical mean.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said on Monday that lower-income Americans receive about 11-14 percent less in Social Security benefits over their lifetime than the average American because they are expected to die sooner. GAO said these results were based on studies that found “lower-income men approaching retirement live, on average, 3.6 to 12.7 fewer years than higher income men.”
Meanwhile, GAO found that expected lifetime benefits paid to higher-income men were between 16-18 percent greater than those expected to be paid to the average American because the rich live longer. The comptroller noted that this “erode[s] the progressive effect of the program,” which seeks to dole out benefits inversely proportional to income.
“Effects on Social Security retirement benefits are particularly important to lower-income groups because Social Security is their primary source of retirement income,” GAO also noted.
The report was prepared for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a contender in the ongoing Democratic presidential primaries.
“Poverty should not be a death sentence,” Sanders said in a statement released Monday. “When over half of older workers have no retirement savings, we need to expand, not cut, Social Security so that every American can retire with the benefits they’ve earned and the dignity they deserve.”
Currently, Social Security taxes only apply to the first $118,500 that an American makes in a year. Sanders has proposed more than doubling that ceiling to $250,000.
His opponent and the frontrunner in the race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said in February that “lifting the cap at some point or another is a very live possibility” but offered few specifics.
In 2008, Clinton opposed a cap-raising proposal offered by her opponent, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
