Every year, the Social Security Board of Trustees releases its short-term (10-year) and long-term (75-year) outlook for the program, taking into account a number of dynamic factors such as wage growth, population growth and mortality rates, and net immigration. Since 1985, the Trustees have warned that the program didn’t have sufficient revenue income to meet its long-term expenditures — and last year was no different.
But e arlier this month, the Social Security Administration published data on the combined investment holdings of the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust and Disability Trust, as of Dec. 31, 2019. After beginning the year with $2,895,174,945,000, the combined value of the program’s investment holdings managed to grow by $2.3 billion to $2,897,492,826,000, marking the smallest increase since 1982. That’s slightly higher than the $1 billion in net-cash surplus the Trustees had forecast, and it staves off the inevitable for Social Security for at least one more year.