THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO THE INCOME OF THE AGED POPULATION.

SOCIAL security; RETIREMENT income; ECONOMIC security; OLDER people; EMPLOYEE benefits

Social Security benefits are the most important source of U.S. retirement income. Over time, however, trends in employer-provided pension offerings, societal changes, and Social Security program rule changes have altered the distribution of income by source among the aged population. Some researchers have argued that the Current Population Survey (CPS) does not properly measure income from retirement accounts and thus overstates reliance on Social Security income. To address such concerns, the Census Bureau revised income-related questions for the 2015 CPS. This note examines reliance on Social Security benefits among people aged 65 or older as measured by the 2015 CPS and two other major surveys. All three surveys report that roughly half of the aged population live in households that receive at least 50 percent of total family income from Social Security and about one-quarter of the aged live in households that receive at least 90 percent of family income from Social Security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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