Updated Long-Term Projections for Social Security. Potential Range of Scheduled Social Security Outlays and Revenues

摘要

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regularly prepares long-term projections of the future paths of revenues and outlays for the Social Security program.1 This latest report presents projections for the 75-year period from 2008 through 2082. (All years referred to in this report are calendar years.) The projections differ somewhat from earlier results because of newly available programmatic and economic data, updated assumptions about future demographic and economic trends, and improvements in CBOs models. Such long-term projections are necessarily uncertain; nevertheless, the general conclusions presented here hold true under a wide range of assumptions. Today, Social Securitys revenues each year are greater than its outlays, but as the baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) continues to age, growth in the number of Social Security beneficiaries will accelerate, and outlays will grow substantially faster than revenues. CBO projects that outlays will first exceed revenues in 2019 and that the Social Security trust funds will be exhausted in 2049.2 If the law remains unchanged, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will then no longer have the legal authority to pay full benefits.