Social Security is by far the most effective antipoverty program in the history of the United States. In addition to keeping millions of seniors out of poverty, the program also helps children and working-age adult survivors cope with financial hardship. Click here to go to the visualization.
The source for this is my own tabulations of the one-year sample of the 2013 American Community Survey, crosswalked from PUMAs to Congressional Districts using MABLE’s crosswalks. Note that the visualization’s outputs may differ from other sources, especially those that use the Current Population Survey ASEC for estimates. In fact, the numbers presented below represent a sizable underestimate compared to tabulations from the ASEC, which show that Social Security lifts about 22 million people out of poverty. The reason for this discrepancy is that my tabulations do not include people living in group quarters as a result of limitations in the ACS income data. Therefore, the number of people aged 65+, who are most likely to be living in group quarters, is severely underestimated.
Noting this underestimate, Social Security’s huge impact across generations is still quite remarkable. Only a particularly debased policymaker would even consider cuts to a program so important to so many people.
The post Visualizing Social Security’s role in lifting millions out of poverty appeared first on Conor F. McGovern.
