GOP, Democratic voters agree on one thing: Stabilizing Social Security

To gauge Americans’ policy preferences, the survey used “trade-off analysis”—a technique widely used in market research to learn which product features consumers want and are willing to pay for. The trade-off exercise allowed survey participants to choose among different packages of Social Security changes.

As lawmakers would do, they weighed how each policy change would affect workers, retirees and the program’s future financing gap, and then were asked to chose among different packages of reforms.

Seven out of 10 participants prefer a package that would eliminate Social Security’s long-term financing gap without cutting benefits. The preferred package would:

• Gradually, over 10 years, eliminate the cap on earnings taxed for Social Security. With this change, the 6 percent of workers who earn more than the cap would pay into Social Security all year, as other workers do. In return, they would get somewhat higher benefits.  
• Gradually, over 20 years, raise the Social Security tax rate that workers and employers each pay from 6.2 percent of earnings to 7.2 percent. A worker earning $50,000 a year would pay about 50 cents a week more each year, matched by the employer.  
• Increase Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment to reflect the inflation experienced by seniors.  
• Raise Social Security’s minimum benefit so that a worker who pays into Social Security for 30 years or more can retire at 62 or later and have benefits above the federal poverty line.

Without any changes, Social Security would be able to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits after 2037. The study’s authors claim this package would turn the projected financing gap into a small surplus, providing a margin of safety.

The package was preferred by large majorities across political parties and income levels. Fully 68 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents favor the package, as do 71 percent of study participants with incomes above $75,000 and 68 percent of those with incomes under $35,000.

“This study drills deeper into public preferences than standard surveys to learn how Americans consider the consequences of their choices and decide what they are willing to pay for. It deserves close attention by lawmakers,” James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO of Tufts Health Plan and grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the original Social Security law in 1935, said in response to the survey’s release.