Patching the Security Net: Congress Must Improve the Administrative Capacity of Social Security to Help Reduce Elder Poverty

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Austin Nettrouer and Nathan Myers
September 27, 2024

Poverty, used as an indicator of economic well-being, manifests through varied symptoms, including but not limited to, food and nutrition insecurity, energy and utility deprivation, inability to access (substantive) health and wellness care and inability to pursue additional education of either pre-kindergarten or postsecondary education. These symptoms have varied effects on different demographics. We will focus this discussion on the elder demographic.

In terms of those affected by poverty, the elderly may be an overlooked group. However, as elders continue to increase as a share of the population, the factors surrounding what drives many into poverty will increasingly play a role in reducing overall poverty. Elder poverty is driven by the rising costs of healthcare and Medicare premiums, lingering effects from the 2008 recession and subsequent economic downturns and pension programs at risk from a volatile stock market. Increasing life expectancy forces retirees to stretch their retirement earnings. This risk falls especially heavily on women due to a longer life expectancy, as well as both women and minorities who disproportionately experience a wealth gap. One key U.S. anti-poverty program (APP) is Social Security.

A recent story published on the website Government Executive highlighted Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley’s efforts to get Congress to support a budget increase to bolster the program’s administrative capacity in light of increased service volume even as program personnel and funding decrease. Groups like the American Federation of Government Employees had been warning for some time that if the situation was not addressed, customer service was going to seriously suffer. Once confirmed O’Malley instituted reforms like SecurityStat to collect data on customer service issues in an effort to identify and address them. Reforms like this have improved the functioning of Social Security, although numerous challenges remain.   

Similar to Security Stat measuring customer service, the methods of measuring poverty have developed over time as the United States’ social safety net has expanded. Individual/household spending has evolved to complicate the ability to effectively measure poverty and effectiveness of APPs. While the literature is extensive in covering poverty and anti-poverty programs, a gap exists in determining the ideal measure of when an investment in APPs will attribute to reducing the poverty of the state. A new and increasingly used measurement is the Elder Security Standard Index, which considers the unique expenses and benefits available to elders to assist in evaluating their economic well-being. A notable consideration is that the poverty estimates do not include institutionalized individuals, which in this case includes elders in retirement facilities and assisted living care. Within the elder demographic, those who are older, women, the non-married and ethnic minorities hold higher rates of poverty.

Since 1967, various initiatives and APPs sought to reduce the poverty of the United States. Overall, government programs reduced poverty in America ten-fold over the last half-century and served a vital role in reducing poverty rates during recessions. Among those in poverty, the demographic which benefited the most were the elderly followed by children. The resilience of the Social Security program is particularly critical as it is a key anti-poverty measure for the elderly population, representing the sole source of income for 28 percent of elderly Americans in 2021. In 2021, 70 percent of elderly Americans in poverty lived in homes not receiving Social Security checks, compared to 90 percent of elderly American not in poverty who were receiving benefits. Medicare and Medicaid offer some support for the healthcare costs borne by the elderly, while there is comparatively little support to help the elderly maintain housing adequate to their needs. There is evidence that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, has alone accounted for a reduction in poverty. However, while research has recognized SNAP’s ability to improve health outcomes and lower healthcare costs, it has not concluded the extent to which SNAP reduces elder poverty in particular. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is combined with other public cash assistance when determining its effect on poverty, and has been found to have a positive yet marginal effect on elder poverty in comparison to other programs.

Work still needs to be done to understand the cumulative effect of these programs, as well as how individual programs affect the influence of other anti-poverty programs. Further research can seek to find an APP Investment Index which is statistically significant in regard to reduction of existing poverty. Finding a benchmark in determining the ideal spending amount for APPs is a consistent goal of scholars and policymakers, and one which will hopefully further reduce elder poverty. In the meantime, Congress should provide the necessary support for programs like Social Security that play a critical role in keeping the elderly out of poverty. Social Security’s customer service challenges are not just about the convenience of recipients. Such issues could result in the interruption of or delays in benefits, diminishing the program’s ability to combat poverty in America. Additionally, the effects of additional personnel and funding on the operations of the program should also be studied to determine where the additional resources were most effective in helping to contain poverty.  

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Author: Austin Nettrouer, MPA is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. His areas of research include public administration, public policy, and education policy. Nettrouer is a graduate of Indiana State University (BA, MPA). 

Author: Nathan Myers, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Master of Public Administration at Indiana State University. His areas of research include public policy, public health emergency preparedness, and the governance of biotechnology. He is the author of Pandemics and Polarization: Implications of Partisan Budgeting for Responding to Public Health Emergencies and numerous related articles. Myers is a graduate of Knox College (BA), University of Illinois at Springfield (MPA), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Ph.D.)

 

 

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