Joni Lavery

How affordable are Social Security cash benefits projected to be when baby boomers retire? This Brief examines various measures and finds: The number of Social Security beneficiaries per 100 covered workers will increase from 30 in 2005 to 46 in 2030 and to 50 in 2050. Social Security benefits will rise from 4.3 percent as a share of the total economy today to 6.1 percent in 2030. When baby boomers are retired, the total number of people each worker supports (including workers themselves, children, retirees, and other nonworking adults) will not be as large as it was when the baby boomers were children. As a share of the total economy, spending for Social Security benefits when baby boomers are retired will grow less than spending for public education grew when baby boomers were children. While baby boomers may have been a surprise when they turned up in record numbers to enroll in kindergarten in the 1950s, their retirement six decades later is not. Policymakers began to plan as early as 1983, when Congress lowered the cost o