Digital Commons Network^™

Social Security And The Low-Income Worker , Nancy J. Altman

American University Law Review

Social Security is important to all Americans, but, particularly, to low-income workers and their families. Financing the program partly through earmarked deductions from employees’ wages is an integral and vital part of Social Security’s design, and has been an important reason for Social Security’s success and broad public support over the program’s seventy-year life. At the same time, these contributions are harder to bear for those with lower wages. Just as the EITC has eased the burden of these contributions without undermining the basic structure and philosophy of Social Security, so the program’s long-range deficit, if eliminated properly, can help …