Industry News

On January 27, 2025, the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) released its report, Social Security’s First 90 Years: A History of Bipartisan and Intergenerational Support. NIRS examined over 40 years of public opinion polling related to the Social Security Program that was established after the Great Depression to protect older Americans and reduce poverty. The report finds that public support remains strong for Social Security and also recognizes that confidence in Social Security increases with age.

Other key findings include: 

• The available polling data indicates that strong majorities have favorable views of Social Security and consider it to be one of the most important government programs.
• Overall, many Americans believe more money should be spent on Social Security regardless of age, gender, income, education or political affiliation.
• Interestingly, workers of different ages have differing views about expected retirement age. Typically, younger workers expect to retire before age 65, while older workers expect to retire after age 65.

The report concludes, “Congress and the new presidential administration should work together to resolve Social Security’s financing challenges in order to restore confidence in the program.”

NIRS utilized data from 15 different surveys for a total of 50 different iterations from 1978-2023 with a total of about 154,500 respondents.

The brief is available here.