Attention, Inertia, and Equity in the Social Security Program

Abstract

Payments for Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance of Social Security constitute almost one-fourth of all the spending of the national government, and those payments are growing at an impressive rate. Social Security enjoys most of the mechanisms that bind future politicians to the preferences of the past, yet pressures for major changes continue to build. By applying punctuated equilibrium theory to Social Security, this article analyzes its propensity for periods of stability broken by major policy changes and redirections. The empirical record of Social Security since 1940 reveals both lurches and lulls in government attention and action. This analysis indicates that intergenerational tension between those who benefit from and those who pay for Social Security constitutes a potent source of the kind of policy punctuations called for by theory; however, the future of Social Security is not so bleak as one might suppose.