Social Security: Gallup Poll Shows America’s Optimism for Program Is Growing in 2024

Vance Cariaga
Choreograph / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Choreograph / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Social Security got hit with an avalanche of negative headlines in 2023, ranging from staff shortages and funding problems to customer service issues and an overpayment scandal. One union leader warned that the Social Security Administration is an agency “in crisis,”  while a member of Congress said ordinary citizens are being punished by the SSA “for a government failure.”

Retirement Planning: How Much the Average Person 65 and Older Spends Monthly
Discover: 3 Ways To Recession-Proof Your Retirement

Despite all that, many Americans remain fairly upbeat about Social Security, according to a recent Gallup poll of 1,300 U.S. nonretirees and more than 600 retirees.

Find: The 5 Things That Disappear When You Retire

The poll, conducted over the summer and released last month, found that Americans are more optimistic about the future of Social Security than they’ve been in recent years.

Fifty percent of nonretirees expect the Social Security system to pay them a benefit when they retire, while 47% do not. That represents a sunnier outlook than in the past. In surveys taken between 2005 and 2015, nonretirees were more inclined to predict they would not receive Social Security retirement benefits.

That’s not the only positive shift in attitude, either. More that half (53%) of current retirees in Gallup’s latest poll believe they’ll continue to receive their full Social Security benefits — up from only 37% in 2010 and 49% in 2015. In contrast, 43% of retirees currently believe their benefits will eventually be cut.

Fears of benefit cuts are nothing new, but those fears have gained steam in recent years as Social Security heads for a major funding shortfall. The program’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund is expected to run out of money around 2033, which means Social Security will have to be funded solely through payroll taxes — and those currently cover only 77% of benefits.

It’s important to remember that even though Social Security benefits might get cut when the OASI fund runs out of money, the program itself will still pay more than three-quarters of current benefits because it is self-perpetuating through payroll taxes. Even so, a lot of Americans are convinced they won’t get any benefits.

Gallup found that among Americans still in the workforce, expectations for receiving Social Security benefits vary by age. Older nonretirees are reasonably confident, with about two-thirds of those 50 and older expecting to get benefits. The least confident are those ages 30 to 49, with only 37% of respondents in this group believing they will get benefits.

The youngest adults — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — are fairly evenly divided, with half believing they’ll get benefits and 48% believing they won’t. That’s a more upbeat outlook than in 2015, when only about one-third of younger adults believed they would get Social Security benefits.

“While policymakers may not share Americans’ increasingly positive outlook, U.S. adults are more optimistic about the future of Social Security, at least as it pertains to them, than they were in Gallup’s most recent surveys in 2010 and 2015,” Gallup Senior Editor Jeffrey Jones wrote in a December news release. “Much of this increased optimism comes from the youngest Americans, who are roughly four decades away from retirement.”

In terms of fixing Social Security’s funding problems: Most respondents (61%) prefer that the government raise Social Security taxes, while 31% would rather the government curb Social Security benefits. That gap is bigger than it was in surveys conducted in 2005, 2010 and 2015.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Social Security: Gallup Poll Shows America’s Optimism for Program Is Growing in 2024

Advertisement