Dean Baker's Statment on the 2016 Social Security Trustees Report
WASHINGTON - CEPR's Dean Baker issued the following statement to the 2016 Social Security Trustees Report:
"The 2016 Social Security Trustees Report is little changed from the 2015 Report. It shows a small decrease in the projected 75-year shortfall of 0.02 percentage points. Changes in the disability program, along with small changes in projections more than offset the increase of 0.6 percentage points due to shifting the projection period by a year. (The new projection adds 2093, a year with a large projected deficit, and loses 2015, a year with a surplus.) While reporters and politicians routinely focus on the projected shortfall, what will matter far more to the people covered by Social Security is the projected growth in real wages and their distribution. As has been pointed out, almost 40 percent of the projected shortfall in the program is attributable to the upward redistribution of income over the last four decades. This has pushed a larger share of wage income over the taxable maximum. For this reason, the finances of the program are directly affected by the distribution of income.

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