Description: The article first tries to determine a consensus view of what social security should accomplish and then tries to measure how well the current level of benefits succeeds in meeting these goals. Assessing benefit adequacy is an essential element in putting the overall program on a sound financing footing.

Description: A discussion of pension reform in China at the time of the July 1997 introduction of a new unified pension system.

Description: This 1978 session on Social Security Funding included discussion on 1. Major Amendments, 2. Financing condition of Social Security after amendments, 3. Benefit levels, and 4. Possible future legislation.

Description: This paper suggests that two opposing pressures are at work in the United States. One is the limit to the number of retired adults that the nation can support. The other is the growing diversity of needs and desires of older people and employers. These two opposing pressures will frame the issues of the future.

Description: This presentation, session number 80PD, took place at the 1999 Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 16-18 in Seattle. The panelists discuss the far-reaching, and not fully understood, proposals for fundamentally changing Social Security, including proposals from Congress, private individuals and groups, and by members of the recent Advisory Council on Social Security. They include “privatizing” Social Security, partially or fully, and changing the investment policy to allow trust fund investments in private securities. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.