| SSP No. 29 |
January 6, 2003 |
Public Opinion and Private Accounts: Measuring Risk and Confidence in Rethinking Social Security
by John Zogby, Regina Bonacci, John Bruce, Will Daley, and Rebecca Wittman
John Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International, a public opinion research firm. The other
authors are senior officers and researchers with Zogby International.
Executive Summary
Social Security has long been America's
most popular government program. Yet it is
a program badly in need of reform. In recent
years, reformers have proposed allowing
younger workers to take all or part of their
Social Security taxes out of the Social Security
system and invest them privately in individual
accounts similar to IRAs or 401(k) plans. While
those proposals have been politically contentious,
the American public appears to be well
ahead of its elected representatives in accepting
both the need for reform and the advantages of
individual accounts.
A careful examination of public opinion
polling on this issue shows that a substantial
majority of the American public supports proposals
that would allow them to invest a portion
of their Social Security taxes through individual
accounts. That support has been consistent over
time and is seen in a broad range of public opinion
surveys. The handful of public opinion surveys
showing less support for individual
accounts are based largely on biased questions.
Support for individual accounts is based on
Americans should have control over their own
money and retirement—rather than higher
rates-of-return or higher benefits. As a result,
support for individual accounts is less subject to
erosion through outside events, such as fluctua-tions
in the stock market.
There is no correlation between support for
individual accounts and stock market performance.
The growing support for individual
accounts in the late 1990s was not a result of the
bull market. Recent declines in stock prices
have not significantly diminished support for
individual accounts.
Public confidence in the current Social
Security system has been steadily declining, in
part, perhaps, because as increasingly prosperous
Americans have access to alternative
investment vehicles, they are able to make
informed comparisons with Social Security.
In the 2002 elections, pro-reform candidates
were victorious in every campaign in which
Social Security was a major issue. An examination
of public opinion shows that the American
people support Social Security reform, including
individual accounts.
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