Description: This article discusses key excerpts from testimony in June and July 1981 by James R.Swenson, Chairman of the Academy’s Committee on Social Insurance, to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and to the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security. The testimony recommended that the long term problems of Social Security be addressed at the same time as the short term imbalances, that benefits be adjusted to affordable levels e.g. gradual increase in retirement age, that more attention be paid to pessimistic actuarial projections, that the actuaries be given more latitude in selecting assumptions, and that the law be amended to require actuarial certifications for Social Security.

Description: This article is a review of the report, An Actuarial Audit of the Social Security System, by Robert S. Kaplan and Roman L. Weil. Mr. Myers suggests that economists were not the appropriately chosen authors for an actuarial audit.

Description: Article from The Actuary, March 1972 – volume 6 - Issue 3 that illustrates the Social Security Bill H.R. 1 for beneficiaries already on the rolls and for people who will come onto the benefit rolls in the near future that the benefit increases provided by H.R. 1 would be equivalent to cost of living increases.

Description: At its June 21, 1982 meeting, the National Commission on Social Security Reform discussed whether continued mortality improvement justifies raising the normal retirement age. Also discussed was the reported increase in morbidity. This article is a summary of the discussion.

Description: Social Security Disability Insurance DI experience in 1980 is continuing most recent trends, but changing somewhat in a few others.

Description: Summarizes Actuarial Note No. 100, Actuarial Studies No. 80 and No. 81 - published in Feb. and April 1980.

Description: This article from The Actuary, May 1972 – Volume 6, provides references to three notes: 1. Benefit Loads in Relation to Coverage and Reserves for Railroad Retirement and Other Major Retirement and Social Insurance Plans. 2. Two Decades oj Employee Benefit Plans, 1950- 70. 3. Social Security Programs throughout the World.

Description: This article is a review of the book “Social Security” by Robert J. Myers, published in 1975 by Richard D. Irwin, Inc. The reviewer calls the book a “marvelous reference source from which to draw in getting a fix on literally hundreds of the finer points relating to eligibility, the method of calculating benefits, in fact the whole background and evolution of these benefits and methods,” and notes the book will be of value to anyone who works with employee benefits that relate in some way to the Social Security system.

Description: This article, excerpted with permission from the author’s presentation at Open Forum One in Quebec City, describes the Carter Administration’s financing proposals for the Social Security trust funds, released at the same time as the 1977 Trustees Reports. The Administration proposal in total is rather complex and defies a simple explanation but there are basically eight major provisions, which the author discusses in this article.