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Social Security benefits are paid through a self-financing system. Workers and employers pay taxes that are then used to pay Social Security benefits to current recipients.

Social Security program administration includes everything from processing applications and payments to operating field offices around the country.

Congress should allocate sufficient funding to strengthen the administrative capacity of the Social Security Administration (SSA), so it can better meet the needs of applica

Some proposals to address Social Security solvency would adjust the calculation of initial benefits. Others adjust benefit growth over time.

Social Security benefits are calculated as a percentage of lifetime average earnings.

The number of years used to calculate benefits should not be increased beyond the 35 years designated in current law.

Policymakers should retain wage indexing of both the Average Indexed Monthly Earnings and the bend points used in the formula for the Primary Insurance Amount.

Older women—particularly women from racial and ethnic groups that have experienced discrimination—experience higher

Social Security’s long-term solvency challenges have been used by some to propose basic structural changes that would replace all or part of Social Security’s guaranteed ben