The Kids Are Alright: How Social Security Protects Children and Families
More than just a retirement program, Social Security provides a family insurance program for workers, their spouses, and their children. As an essential social insurance program, Social Security provides an important safety net for America's most vulnerable citizens, many of whom are children. Consequently, cuts to Social Security benefits under current privatization schemes threaten the millions of children who depend on Social Security.
Almost 5.5 million children benefit from Social Security. Over 3 million children directly receive Social Security benefits, more than any other Federal program. Another 2.4 million children live in families that rely on Social Security. In Indiana, 64,000 people receiving Social Security benefits are children. According to National Center for Children in Poverty Acting Deputy Director Nancy Cauthen, Social Security serves as the United States government's largest children's program, disbursing approximately $16 billion annually to child beneficiaries.
Social Security benefits provide a crucial source of income for the families of many children. In fact, according to the National Urban League, Social Security benefits raise one million children out of poverty every year and rescue another one million children from the depths of extreme poverty, defined as living below half the poverty line. Children from impoverished families receive the greatest benefit from Social Security, as a result of the program's contribution to countering the effects of living in a low-income family. In addition to providing an important resource for impoverished children, Social Security also prevents middle- and low-income children from falling into poverty.
Social Security benefits serve as a particularly important resource for children of color. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 26 percent of African American Social Security beneficiaries and 20 percent of Latino beneficiaries are children.
Social Security also provides crucial benefits for disabled children and their families. Approximately 750,000 adults severely disabled in childhood continue to receive benefits. However, current privatization plans cannot guarantee the continuation of benefits for disabled children and their families.
At its inception in 1935, Social Security originally focused largely on the retirement of individual workers. However, with the Act's amendment in 1939, the program shifted to an emphasis on protecting worker's families, making widows and children potential beneficiaries in the case of the loss of the family's primary wage earner. In contrast to the current privatization debate which erroneously portrays the program as only an individual retirement program, Social Security is better understood as a holistic program of benefits which protects workers, their spouses, and their children from risk. As Economic Policy Institute Senior Fellow William E. Spriggs argues, “far from Social Security being a fight of the young versus the old, the program is really about family security-young and old.”
Changes in the Social Security system promise to have a drastic impact on children. Plans to reduce benefits threaten to result in cuts for children who depend on the program's income provisions. As Spriggs warns, privatization threatens the program's benefits for children by shifting the program's focus from assuring parents that their children will be protected in the event that the parent becomes disabled or dies to serving solely as an individual savings vehicle for retirement. The program is worth fighting for, and in the name of all of our children and grandchildren, we must seek to preserve this crucial benefit. The future security of children and their families depends on all our efforts.
