The Future of Social Security

Subscribe to the economic studies bulletin, henry j. aaron and henry j. aaron the bruce and virginia maclaury chair, senior fellow emeritus - economic studies robert d. reischauer robert d. reischauer distinguished institute fellow; president emeritus - urban institute.

April 19, 1998

Social Security has been a huge success. It provides benefits to 44 million Americans who are elderly, disabled or survivors of deceased workers. More than three-fifths of the elderly derive the majority of their income from Social Security. Without the program’s benefits, half of the elderly would live in poverty. Social Security also provides families of active workers with a form of life insurance worth more than $12 trillion—more than all private life insurance currently in force.

Its accomplishments notwithstanding, the current system has to change. The number of beneficiaries will double over the next four decades while the number of workers who pay the taxes that support the system will grow by only 17 percent. Although the program’s receipts now exceed its expenditures by more than $100 billion a year and it is adequately funded for the next three decades, the revenue will cover only 70 percent to 75 percent of promised benefits after 2029.

As policy makers look for ways to close the projected long-term deficit, some are suggesting that Social Security should be privatized—that is, replaced with mandatory saving in individually owned accounts. With the stock market soaring and many Americans gaining experience with mutual funds, individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, tying basic retirement benefits to the performance of mandated personal retirement accounts, look increasingly attractive. Such accounts would let future workers invest some or all of the money they now pay to Social Security in the private markets—allowing them, it is claimed, to earn higher returns than Social Security can offer.

But before we succumb to “bull-market frenzy,” everyone should insist on answers to three questions: Would the returns on personal accounts actually exceed what a reformed Social Security could deliver? Would benefits under a privatized system be safe? Would these privatized alternatives reliably fulfill the current program’s crucial social functions?

The answer to all three questions is no. Privatization is not the answer because Social Security, with changes that would leave its basic structure intact, can provide workers with higher returns than could any privatized alternative and can provide these returns with much less risk while continuing to advance important social objectives that privatized alternatives would jeopardize.

Social Security was created in 1935 to provide all American families with a dependable income base upon which they could build additional protection against income loss for themselves and their families after retirement, disability or the death of a breadwinner.

To this end, Social Security replaces a larger share of lost income for low earners than for high earners, grants more generous survivors’ benefits to larger than to smaller families, provides extra resources for retired couples in which one spouse has had no or limited earnings, and gives special consideration to divorced people whose marriages lasted at least 10 years.

In part because of these provisions, Social Security lifts twice as many people out of poverty than all other income-tested assistance programs, cash and in-kind, combined.

Under a privatized system, in which each participant’s benefit would depend on the accumulations in his or her individual account, there is no room for such social assistance. That burden would have to be borne by a separate program, possibly one requiring a demeaning means test.

Social Security provides a secure and predictable financial guarantee by tying benefits to the average wages workers have earned over their lifetimes. In privatized systems, however, benefits ride the financial market roller coaster.

A drop in asset value just before a worker reaches retirement or becomes disabled can decimate benefits. Some may dismiss the post-1929 stock market crash as ancient history and say that the 60-percent swoon in Japan’s Nikkei average between early 1990 and 1995 “couldn’t happen here.” Our colleague Gary Burtless has estimated that under a privatized retirement system, in which all workers were required to invest a fixed percentage of the yearly earnings in common stocks, the ratios of benefits to past earnings of those retiring in the late 1970s (after the sag in U.S. stock prices) would have been less than half those available to workers who retired at the start of that decade.

Market volatility may be an annoyance to the wealthy, but it is potentially catastrophic for the majority of Americans who have few financial assets other than Social Security.

Advocates of private accounts admit that they may be riskier but argue that the risk is worth bearing because the returns on average are so much higher. But if the balances in all personal accounts were invested in stocks and bonds, the accounts taken together would have to earn about the average return paid on stocks and bonds. There is no financial Lake Wobegon where all, or even most, of the returns are above average!

Of course, some investors would beat the averages—most likely those with market sophistication or who can afford to buy expert financial advice. Others would do poorly because they invested too conservatively or accepted some of the endless supply of bad financial advice that is available.

If Social Security accumulated reserves of a similar size and was freed to invest in private assets, however, it would earn even higher returns than the average private account. The reason for this is straightforward: Brokerage fees for buying and selling stocks and bonds and for sales and management fees charged by mutual funds chomp away at the returns of private accounts. On average, these expenses are likely to take 1 percent to 2 percent out of accounts’ balances each year before retirement. Such charges would reduce, by 20 percent to 40 percent, the amounts the workers would ultimately accumulate in their accounts.

If Social Security hired private managers to invest its large reserves in private assets, the costs would be negligible, less than one-hundredth of a percent of the funds under management each year—leaving more of the total return to support pensions.

An even bigger bite would await owners of private accounts who upon reaching retirement age wanted to convert their private account balances into annuities that would guarantee them a fixed yearly income until they die. Privately purchased annuities are expensive. Many financial institutions that sell these contracts charge fees that average about 10 percent of the amount invested to cover sales costs, account maintenance and company profits, and an additional 10 percent to allow for the fact that people with long life expectancies are more likely to buy annuities than are people with shorter life expectancies. Faced with such charges, many retirees might choose to withdraw funds from their accounts periodically, thereby running the risks of either outliving their assets or, fearing that fate, depriving themselves needlessly.

A 20-percent bite out of what workers have saved as the price for an annuity is pointless and wasteful, since Social Security can convert savings into annuities at a negligible cost.

Not all privatization plans would generate such large administrative costs. But all would be more costly to run than Social Security and would therefore pay out smaller and riskier benefits than under a reformed Social Security program. And all would make important social objectives more difficult to achieve than they are under the current system.

So what needs to be done to fix Social Security? First, coverage should be made truly universal by covering all newly hired state and local government workers, one-quarter of whom are now outside the system. Extending coverage would provide additional protections to these workers and help Social Security’s finances. Furthermore, benefits should be treated like other retirement income by subjecting them to the same income-tax rules that apply to private pensions, that is by taxing benefits that exceed what the worker has contributed. These tax revenues could be credited to the trust fund to help finance future benefits.

Second, benefits should be slightly reduced by increasing the number of years of earnings averaged to compute a workers’ benefit and by accelerating scheduled increases in the normal retirement age. In combination with announced corrections in the Consumer Price Index, which would lower annual inflation adjustments to benefits, the changes listed so far would close two-thirds of the projected long-run deficit.

Third, the requirement that Social Security reserves be invested in relatively low-yielding Treasury securities should be scrapped and the trustees empowered to invest in a diversified portfolio that includes private as well as government assets. The responsibility for managing these funds should be transferred to a new, quasi-private agency modeled on the Federal Reserve. The chair and members, appointed for lengthy, staggered terms, should be required to invest reserves only in broad index funds and to make sure that shares were voted solely to reflect the economic interest of participants.

This structure would save money and make possible higher average returns for beneficiaries than private accounts could offer.

It would also ensure that Social Security reserves could not be used as an instrument of political control over private business decisions.

And moving the reserves to a quasi-private entity would help guard against the possibility that growing fund surpluses would be used to justify tax cuts or spending increases.

The foregoing menu of changes would fully close the projected long-term deficit in Social Security and for most people, generate higher and more reliable pensions than would private accounts. Of course, other measures could be substituted or added to further strengthen the long-run financing position of the program or to adjust the structure of benefits. The normal retirement age could be raised as life expectancy rises. The payroll tax could be hiked by perhaps 0.5 percentage points each on workers and employers sometime after the baby boomers are fully retired. The age at which benefits are first available could be raised gradually from 62 to 64 to encourage later retirement, particularly if the requirements for disability benefits are somewhat eased for this age group. Spouses’ benefits might be lowered in exchange for increased benefits to elderly widows and widowers.

This menu shows that fixing the financial problems of Social Security is not rocket science. There are many ways to do it that don’t require intergalactic thrust. As the Social Security debate continues, it is important to realize that privatization is not a free lunch. Taxes have to be raised, benefits for current retirees and older workers cut, or both. The unpleasant reality is that the current payroll taxes, 80 percent of which are needed to pay current benefits, do not generate enough money to fund meaningful deposits into private accounts unless benefits are slashed deeply.

If the advocates of privatizing Social Security were making valid claims, it might be worth paying those higher taxes. But it is hard to see why American workers should be asked to fork over more for a new system that would deliver lower average benefits for each tax dollar they pay, that would subject workers to financial risks they are ill-equipped to bear, and that would place in jeopardy the social assistance on which millions of Americans depend.

We need to tune up Social Security, not trade it in for a new, but flawed, model.

The authors are senior fellows at the Brookings Institution and co-authors of a forthcoming 20th Century Fund-Brookings Institution guide to the debate on Social Security reform.

Retirement Social Safety Net

Economic Studies

Lorena Hernandez Barcena, Jimena Ruiz Castro, Nasiha Salwati, Louise Sheiner

July 29, 2021

Melissa S. Kearney

October 21, 2020

Henry J. Aaron

June 23, 2020

Case Study #10: The Exclusion of Social Security Retirement Benefits from Taxable Income

Download (PDF) Fiscal Fact No. 388: Case Study #10: The Exclusion of Social Security Retirement Benefits from Taxable Income

These results are part of an eleven-part series, The Economics of the Blank Slate , created to discuss the economic effects of repealing various individual tax A tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. expenditures. In these reports, Tax Foundation economists use our macroeconomic model to answer two questions lawmakers are considering:

  • What effect does eliminating these expenditures have on GDP, jobs, and federal revenue?
  • What would be the effect on GDP, jobs, and federal revenue if the static savings were used to finance tax cuts on a revenue neutral basis?

For an overview of the project, click here . For links to articles from the rest of the series, click here .

Key Points:

Eliminating the partial exclusion of Social Security retirement benefits from taxable income Taxable income is the amount of income subject to tax, after deductions and exemptions. For both individuals and corporations, taxable income differs from—and is less than—gross income. would:

  • Increase tax revenues by $19.3 billion on a static basis;
  • Result in a negligible effect on GDP; and
  • Produce slightly more revenues ($19.5 billion) on a dynamic basis;
  • Increase employment by the equivalent of approximately 12,000 full-time workers; and
  • Produce little change in hourly wages.

Ending the partial exclusion and trading the static revenue gains for individual rate cuts would:

  • Allow for an across-the-board rate cut of 1.9 percent;
  • Boost GDP by $30 billion per year; and
  • Boost federal revenues by $7.1 billion on a dynamic basis;
  • Increase employment by the equivalent of approximately 180,000 full-time workers; and

The federal government began taxing a portion of Social Security benefits in 1983 and increased the tax in 1993. The method of assessing the tax is complicated and generates extremely high marginal tax rate The marginal tax rate is the amount of additional tax paid for every additional dollar earned as income. The average tax rate is the total tax paid divided by total income earned. A 10 percent marginal tax rate means that 10 cents of every next dollar earned would be taken as tax. s relative to what the tax collects.

At low incomes, benefits are tax free. However, once a taxpayer's income reaches a threshold of $25,000 for a single filer, or $32,000 for joint filers, Social Security benefits start being brought into taxable income, at a rate of 50 cents of benefits for every extra dollar of income over the threshold until half of benefits are taxable. When incomes exceed $34,000 for a single filer, and $44,000 for joint filers, the benefits are added to income at a rate of 85 cents of benefits for every extra dollar of income over the threshold, until 85 percent of benefits are taxable.

If a beneficiary is in the first tier and earns an extra $1 of interest income, the person's taxable income will rise by $1.50 ($1 of interest and 50 cents of Social Security). Because an extra $1 of interest (or any other type of income) increases the tax base The tax base is the total amount of income, property, assets, consumption, transactions, or other economic activity subject to taxation by a tax authority. A narrow tax base is non-neutral and inefficient. A broad tax base reduces tax administration costs and allows more revenue to be raised at lower rates. by $1.50, the effective tax rate is 150 percent of the statutory tax rate on that other, non-benefit income. That is, someone in the 15 percent bracket experiences an effective rate of 22.5 percent on the extra dollar of interest or other income earned. In the second tier, the effective tax rate is 185 percent of the statutory rate. A taxpayer in the 25 percent bracket faces an effective tax rate of 46.25 percent on other income while his or her benefits are being phased into taxable income.

The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury see a tax expenditure Tax expenditures are a departure from the “normal” tax code that lower the tax burden of individuals or businesses, through an exemption , deduction , credit , or preferential rate. Expenditures can result in significant revenue losses to the government and include provisions such as the earned income tax credit ( EITC ), child tax credit ( CTC ), deduction for employer health-care contributions, and tax-advantaged savings plans. here because the phase-in only partially removes the exemption. The Treasury reasons that if the benefits were treated as normal income, an allowance would be made for the return of previously taxed contributions, but they "generally do not exceed 15 percent of benefits." [1] It is not clear if the JCT regards normal treatment as taxing all Social Security benefits or would, like Treasury, make an adjustment for the return of prior contributions.

Following Treasury's suggestion, it was assumed here that the tax expenditure would be removed by taxing Social Security benefits as ordinary income, after 15 percent of benefits had been excluded as a return of contributions. In a conventional revenue estimate that holds the economy's size fixed, the Tax Foundation's model estimated this change would raise $19 billion. (See Chart 1.)

social security case study

We then ran our model again under the dynamic assumption that tax changes can lead to changes in the labor supply, aggregate capital stock, and GDP. The outcome was almost the same as before, with revenue up by about $19 billion and GDP essentially unchanged. This may appear counterintuitive, because adding more benefits to ordinary taxable income would push some filers into higher tax bracket A tax bracket is the range of incomes taxed at given rates, which typically differ depending on filing status. In a progressive individual or corporate income tax system, rates rise as income increases. There are seven federal individual income tax brackets; the federal corporate income tax system is flat . s; by itself that should reduce the incentive to work and save, modestly reduce GDP, and lose some of the expected revenue.

However, this revised method of taxing benefits would end the phase-in’s interaction with other income and would avoid the rate spike of 150 percent or 185 percent that many Social Security recipients experience under current law over the range of income in which the benefits are currently phased in. On net, effective marginal tax rates would be little changed. In short, because of the inefficiency of the current phase-in, the tax expenditure could be ended, federal revenue increased, and the tax code simplified at no cost in terms of economic growth.

The revenue gain could finance a 1.9 percent across-the-board reduction in marginal tax rates. [2] (For example, the 25 percent rate would drop to 24.5 percent.) As shown in Chart 2, the model estimates that the increases in the capital stock and labor supply flowing from the rate cut would generate a $30 billion rise in GDP, once the economy had fully adjusted. Moreover, because of the revenue reflow from a larger economy, tax collections would expand by $7 billion.

social security case study

An alternative for lawmakers to consider—and a more generous one than the ordinary income tax treatment outline above—is to exclude a set dollar or percentage amount of Social Security benefits from taxable income (greater than a 15 percent exclusion for lower income beneficiaries) and then add any benefits over that amount to taxable income. [3] If the exclusion amount was adjusted so that the total tax on Social Security benefits stayed the same as it is now, the change would be revenue neutral on a static basis. However, eliminating the income-related phase-in also eliminates the current tax rate spike. As a result, the change would spur growth and pick up some revenue while simplifying the income tax.

Finally, we determined the impact of these scenarios on employment and wages. We found that taxing Social Security benefits as ordinary income would increase employment by the equivalent of about 12,000 full-time workers with little change in the hourly wage. With the rate cut offset, employment would increase by the equivalent of about 180,000 full-time workers, again with little change in the hourly wage.

[1] Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government , Analytical Perspectives , Fiscal Year 2014 , at 274.

[2] We assume proportional cuts in all of the ordinary income tax bracket rates but no cuts in the lower tax rates on capital gains and qualified dividends.

[3] For example, exempt the first $8,000 in benefits for each retiree claiming his or her own benefits (up to $16,000 for a married couple when both worked) and $12,000 for a couple claiming the spousal benefit. Simply add any benefits above these levels to taxable income (but only up to half of total benefits, because only half of the payroll tax A payroll tax is a tax paid on the wages and salaries of employees to finance social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. Payroll taxes are social insurance taxes that comprise 24.8 percent of combined federal, state, and local government revenue, the second largest source of that combined tax revenue. contributions were deductible by the employer as a business cost, while the employee contributions were not deductible and were made after income taxes).

FPA Retreat 2024

Which social security claiming strategy generates the highest legacy value.

Journal of Financial Planning : January 2023

Executive Summary

  • Delaying Social Security can be framed as longevity insurance that helps to support the increasing costs associated with living a long life. It provides inflation-adjusted lifetime benefits for a retiree and a surviving spouse, and the monthly benefits will be 77 percent larger in inflation-adjusted terms for those who claim at 70 instead of at 62.
  • But sometimes this insurance value is questioned, with the idea being that an early claiming decision will provide an opportunity for investments to grow and support better retirement outcomes.
  • Simple extrapolations about suggesting that claiming Social Security early and investing the benefits to earn historical stock market returns misses several important points about retirement income: retirees may not invest this aggressively, and retirees must fund spending from assets and do not experience simple time-weighted returns.
  • To generate the returns needed to beat the benefit of delaying Social Security, there would need to be a high tolerance for risk and an aggressive asset allocation.
  • We find evidence using the historical data that it is uncommon for investment returns to beat the implied benefit of delaying Social Security for long-lived retirees even with relatively aggressive asset allocation strategies.

Wade D. Pfau, Ph.D., CFA, RICP, is the program director of the retirement income certified professional (RICP) designation and a professor of retirement income at The American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, PA, as well as a co-director of the college’s Center for Retirement Income.

Steve Parrish, J.D., RICP, AEP, ChFC, CLU, is co-director of the Center for Retirement Income at The American College of Financial Services, where he is also adjunct professor of advanced planning.

NOTE: Please click the images below for PDF versions. 

JOIN THE DISCUSSION:  Discuss this article with fellow FPA Members through  FPA's Knowledge Circles​ ​​​. ​​​

FEEDBACK: If you have any questions or comments on this article, please contact the editor  HERE . 

Few would disagree that Social Security is a valuable retirement income source, even for affluent and high-net-worth retirees. More pressing is the question of when participants should file for their retirement benefits—as early as age 62 or as late as age 70? The usual filing debates focus on the claimant’s other retirement income sources, investments, and tax situation. Proponents of delayed Social Security filing emphasize that the participant will ultimately get more income, that the ongoing payments act as an insurance benefit that covers the tail risk of longevity, and that delayed filing helps to avoid negative tax consequences such as the tax torpedo or Medicare income-related monthly adjustment amounts (IRMAA) to premiums. In contrast, those who advocate filing early point to situations where the claimant needs the money now, the concern over whether the government may fail to pay projected benefits, the loss in benefits caused by a premature death, and the idea that if benefits are claimed early then they can be invested to earn higher long-term returns.

Several of these matters do suggest a justification for claiming earlier outside of this article’s focus. Those with legitimate medical reasons to project a shorter longevity and those who simply have no alternative and need to access these funds might reasonably decide that claiming earlier is their best option. This article focuses on the latter issue—which of the claiming strategies will end up leaving the largest legacy. In other words, if the claimant does not expect to spend down their entire investment portfolio during their lifetime, which claiming strategy ultimately leaves more inheritance? Specifically, what is the opportunity cost to delaying benefits in terms of what is missed by claiming benefits earlier to reduce pressure on investment distributions and leave more assets exposed to market returns?

Affluent retirees may have multiple retirement income sources (e.g., annuities and pensions), and multiple sources of retirement capital (e.g., 401(k) and personal investments). Because this income and capital will not necessarily be exhausted during retirement, these retirees want to be efficient with their income strategy. The three primary factors in determining the most efficient approach are returns, taxes, and risk.

  • Returns. Social Security has a fixed return factored into the primary insurance amount (PIA) calibrated to actuarial life expectancies and interest rates in 1983. In contrast, the return on retirement capital such as a 401(k) or investment account has a variable return, and this return represents opportunities for high yield, but at a risk.
  • Taxes. Retirement income sources represent a slew of varying taxes, from capital gains and ordinary income to special taxes associated with the Social Security benefit itself. Further, the timing of recognition of income can significantly affect tax efficiency, particularly because the retiree’s tax situation may change.
  • Risk. With opportunity comes risk. Risk can include such issues as inflation, sequence of returns, government default, liquidity, and diminished capacity.

The above issues do not lend themselves to easy quantification. This article will, however, address a key part of the analysis. Our research attempts to address this question: while a participant stands to receive more income later in life by delayed filing, what about the possibility of filing for Social Security as early as possible, which reduces the pressure to draw from investments to cover spend-ing needs, to ultimately yield more wealth available as a legacy? The issue is whether Social Security is a form of longevity insurance or an opportunity for investment, and our analysis utilizes historical market data to suggest possible answers.

Insurance or Investment Opportunity?

Should Social Security be positioned as insurance to provide a source of inflation-adjusted spending protection against the risk of outliving financial assets in retirement, which would imply value for delaying the claiming decision, or is Social Security better positioned as an opportunity to leverage stronger investment portfolio growth by claiming benefits early to reduce short-term portfolio distribution needs? Starkly contrasting opinions about this question exist within the financial services world. There is no correct answer that applies for everyone, but what this research seeks to do is to at least provide evidence about how different claiming strategies would have performed using historical market data. We hope this will provide a better sense about the potential opportunities and risks related to these decisions. To date, we are not aware of such analysis. Most arguments in favor of claiming early tend to assume a fixed rate of return for investments that is typically matched with historical average stock market returns, providing little context to what might happen with real-world investment portfolios during the pivotal early retirement years.

Regarding the view toward treating Social Security as longevity insurance, Social Security retirement benefits are inflation-adjusted and government-backed. With lifetime cash flows, these benefits mitigate longevity, inflation, and market risk for retirees. For risk-averse retirees who would otherwise invest more heavily in bonds, which do not provide longevity protection, the insurance value of Social Security may be even stronger because there would otherwise be less potential for upside growth with investments. A unique aspect of Social Security is that it also provides spousal and survivor  benefits. The insurance perspective is to not focus on regret relating to delaying benefits and then experiencing a premature death, but to focus on avoiding a situation in which retirees outlive their assets. Patience with Social Security may help individuals manage this longevity risk. The view of Social Security as insurance is to delay claiming and to take advantage of the delay credits to obtain the maximum inflation-adjusted lifetime income.

The contrasting viewpoint is to file for Social Security early to invest the benefits into the financial portfolio, or to otherwise use benefits to cover expenses and reduce the withdrawal needs from the investment portfolio to better preserve those assets. With this approach, it is hoped that there will be more lifetime wealth by exposing more investment assets to market returns. The argument is that it makes no sense to delay Social Security because a financial adviser can invest the benefits and earn a higher return for their clients over the long run. Certainly, if realized investment returns are high enough, claiming early is advantageous. But there has been little investigation about the likelihood of achieving the returns needed to allow an early claiming decision to translate into greater lifetime wealth.

We will investigate this matter using two case studies applied to rolling periods from the U.S. historical data since 1871. Social Security claiming strategies involve deciding on which age to claim retirement benefits. Those benefits can be claimed starting at age 62, and additional credits are available for delaying benefits up until age 70. For a single person, the claiming decision is simply a matter of picking the start date for benefits. The decision is more complicated for couples or singles with dependents, though. For couples, each spouse must consider when to claim their own benefit, when to claim their spousal benefit (for the few left who can make this distinction), and the impact of their claiming decision on whether their spouse has access to a spousal benefit and the size of a survivor benefit.

The primary insurance amount (PIA) measures the benefit available at the full retirement age (FRA). Benefits adjust upward or downward depending on when they start relative to the FRA. For each month of delay beyond the full retirement age, the benefit increases by 0.67 percent. This sums to an 8 percent increase in benefits relative to the PIA per year (not compounded). For each month of early uptake relative to the FRA, the benefit reduces by 0.56 percent per month for the first 36 months of early uptake, and by an additional 0.42 percent for any months beyond that. In inflation-adjusted terms, those with an FRA of 67 will experience a monthly benefit that is 77 percent larger by delaying to age 70 compared to claiming at 62, and 24 percent larger than claiming at full retirement age.

Since claiming earlier means more years of benefit receipt, while claiming later means fewer years, when these adjustments were designed in 1983, they were intended to be actuarially fair. This means it should not matter what age one claims their benefit for single individuals who had an average life expectancy in 1983. However, those calculations for actuarial fairness no longer hold for today’s single individuals who have a higher life expectancy, face today’s lower interest rates, or have someone who may receive survivor benefits from their record. Presently, it is not necessary to live to average life expectancy before receiving net positive benefits from delayed filing for Social Security.

A Survey of Literature Regarding Claiming Strategies

The research below seeks to provide evidence about how different claiming strategies would have performed using historical market data. This analysis factors in considerations such as federal income taxes, asset location, and retirement spending patterns. While there is no lack of literature concerning claiming strategies for Social Security, much of the literature focuses on individual aspects of the decision process, whether it be markets, taxes, or government policy. Each of these aspects plays into the ultimate filing decision for an individual or couple.

Fundamental to the claiming decision is understanding how the system works for retirees. Pfau (2021) walks readers through the steps required to have a firm understanding about Social Security claiming. This source describes how benefits are calculated, and how to factor in issues such as spousal and survivor benefits for couples, dependent benefits, and benefits for divorcees. It also describes the two main philosophies related to claiming Social Security: treating Social Security as longevity insurance or focusing on the breakeven age for when delaying benefits will pay off.

Social Security also offers some limited flexibility in managing claiming decisions. For example, there is the possibility of a reversible delay in filing. Levine (2022) notes that the ability to file for benefits retroactively provides the opportunity to make better Social Security claiming decisions.

Return on Assets

Implicit in any discussion of which strategy provides the highest legacy value is the issue of return on assets. This issue is challenging because Social Security as an asset is best described as a stream of payments, contingent on survival, that potentially increases annually to reflect the cost of living. There are few assets available with comparable features.

Some sources use Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the probability of success of various claiming strategies. Monte Carlo simulations provide a way to develop sequences of random market returns fitting predetermined characteristics. This is used to test how financial plans will perform in a wider variety of good and bad market environments. A downside for Monte Carlo simulations is that they do not reflect other characteristics of the historical data not incorporated into the assumptions, and they may not create extreme low or high returns as frequently observed with real historical data (Pfau 2016). For instance, historical data may include mean reversion characteristics or persistence for a variable’s values over time in a manner not picked up by a typical Monte Carlo simulation that assumes the simulated returns are independent and identically distributed in each period. Still, Monte Carlo simulations can be a useful means of assessing various claiming strategies, and represent an opportunity for further research.

Another comparison approach is to calculate the net present value of the various strategies. This, of course, is dependent on using a realistic discount rate. Any comparison of claiming strategies made by discounting to present value must reflect the inflation-adjusted real interest rate associated with Social Security payments. Duffy, Finke, and Blanchett (2021) considered this approach when addressing claiming strategies for higher-earning women. Using the example of healthy and average-health men and women, they found that by calculating the expected net present value using TIPS rates, the value of delayed claiming was significant, particularly for married healthy women. Further, the benefit from delayed claiming for healthy women can be nearly twice the benefit for average males.

In their article, they also considered how these outcomes might change if there were an increase in the real discount rate (they assumed 2 percent) and a possible reduction in Social Security benefits due to depletion of the Social Security trust fund (they assumed a 21 percent reduction occurring in 2026). They found no scenario where healthy women do not increase their expected retirement wealth from delayed claiming.

Risk of Reduced Benefits

Beginning in the year 2021, Social Security retirement benefits paid out began to exceed the growth in the Social Security trust fund. This has led to significant literature addressing “the insecurity of Social Security” (Parrish 2020). The Social Security Administration Board of Trustees 2022 annual report currently projects that the fund will deplete in 2034, and then benefit payments will only be 77 percent of current benefits. Parrish identifies two myths in assessing the risk of Social Security underfunding. One myth is that because of the risk of trust fund depletion, retirees should file early to maximize benefits. The other is that because of the significant number of Americans covered under the Social Security system, Congress will fix the deficit without making any changes in future benefits.

There have been attempts to quantify the risk of a future drop in benefits, similar to the calculations by Duffy, Finke, and Blanchett (2021). Elsasser (2020) analyzes this risk by using the example of a healthy 62-year-old female. He considers possible ages of death and the probability of survival at that age, then tests the value of claiming at age 62 and at age 70. In the analysis he applies a 24 percent benefit cut in 2029 and a 24 percent benefit cut in 2035. His conclusion is that the possibility of cuts in benefits due to Social Security insolvency is not enough to justify claiming early. While the current underfunding of the Social Security system remains an important consideration, much of the literature acknowledges that there are better planning strategies than simply claiming Social Security as soon as possible in order to get the benefits before they go away.

The federal taxes that apply in retirement, and the order in which benefits are withdrawn, can have a significant impact on the net benefits received by an individual or couple claiming Social Security. Our analysis below factors in a number of these tax and ordering issues, including the IRMAA tax penalty on Medicare premiums. Reichenstein and Meyer (2022) consider coordination of Social Security to create a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy. They discuss the complexity of selecting the most tax-efficient withdrawal strategy in retirement, and the importance of the claimant understanding how their method of creating retirement income will impact Social Security taxation and Medicare costs.

Methodology

We use two case studies to quantify how different Social Security claiming strategies impact a retirement income plan using rolling periods from the U.S. historical market data. Each case study is about individuals who recently retired after celebrating their 62nd birthday in January 2022. For their retirement finances, the priority is to build a financial plan that will cover their spending goals through age 95. In cases where this is feasible, a secondary priority is to maximize the after-tax surplus of wealth for their beneficiaries at age 95. We choose relatively conservative spending strategies so that most simulations will still have remaining investment funds available when reach-ing age 95. In simulations where investment assets deplete prior to age 95, legacy is measured as a “reverse legacy” of the shortfall of funds relative to the spending goals that could not be met.

Study Number 1

The first case study is for a single individual with $1 million of total investment assets. Details are shown in Table 1. The retirement assets include $300,000 in a taxable brokerage account (with a $150,000 cost basis), $600,000 in a tax-deferred individual retirement account (IRA), and $100,000 in a tax-exempt Roth IRA. In the case studies, we assume the individuals are renters in retirement to avoid the additional complications associated with managing home equity in the retirement plan.

Case Study Single $1 Million Table 1

This individual’s Social Security PIA is $2,500 per month ($30,000 per year). This is the annual benefit if claiming at the full retirement age of 67 (using current age 62 dollars). The benefit is $21,000 annually if claiming at 62, and $37,200 annually if claiming at 70.

As for the individual’s retirement liabilities, the projected core retirement expenses equal an infla-tion-adjusted $53,500 throughout retirement. This retiree also seeks to spend an additional $5,000 each year through age 75 that is not inflation-adjusted, to get the most enjoyment out of the go-go retirement years, which Stein (1998) defined as the phase in early retirement when retirees are more active in enjoying travel and leisure activities before slowing down later. This individual also seeks reserves to cover contingencies related to healthcare (an additional inflation-adjusted expenditure of $5,000 between the ages of 85 and 95), and long-term care (an additional inflation-adjusted expenditure of $20,000 between the ages of 93 and 95) to reflect overall expense increases after accounting for a reduction in other expenditures when experiencing a long-term care need. The individual lives in a state with no income tax.

There is also a need to pay federal income taxes—an additional expense that will be included in this analysis beyond these spending goals. We calculate taxes on the portfolio distributions, including qualified dividends, interest, and long-term capital gains from the taxable account, the ordinary income generated from IRA distributions, the precise amount of taxes due on Social Security benefits, any Medicare premium surcharges if modified adjusted gross income exceeds the relevant thresholds, and any potential net investment income surtaxes due. These taxes are calculated based on tax law in early 2022, including the shift to higher tax rates in 2026 that is part of the sunsetting provisions in current law. Tax brackets increase with inflation, though the thresholds for determining taxes on Social Security are not inflation adjusted. We use the required minimum distribution (RMD) life tables introduced in 2022 for calculating RMDs. We also assume the 2022 standard deduction is used unless the additional expenses for the health and long-term care spending exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income by a large enough degree that this amount is greater than the standard deduction.

Investment assets are all held in a balanced fund of stocks and bonds. We consider three different stock allocations for the investments: 25 percent, 50 percent, and 75 percent stocks. Stocks are rep-resented with large-capitalization U.S. stocks, while bonds reflect 10-year constant maturity Treasuries. Stock dividends are assumed to be qualified and receive preferential income tax rates, bond interest is taxed as ordinary income, and we assume that unsold investments do not generate any unrealized capital gains distributions.

The legacy value of assets reflects the after-tax value of investments remaining at age 95. Taxable assets receive a step-up in basis at death, providing their full value for heirs. For tax-deferred assets, we assume that adult children will be beneficiaries, and the SECURE Act requires them to spend down the account within a 10-year window when they may still be in their peak earnings years and face higher tax rates. To reflect this, we assume that remaining tax-deferred assets will be taxed at a 25 percent rate to reduce their legacy value to heirs. Though distributions from inherited IRAs can be amortized over 10 years, we assume a full distribution in the first year as a simplification. Tax-free Roth assets also face the same distribution requirements, but they will not be taxable to heirs, so their full value passes as legacy.

If the entire spending goal cannot be met over the retirement planning horizon, we calculate the spending shortfall as a reverse legacy, reflecting the amount of desired spending that cannot be met. It is the sum of desired spending less the available income sources. When investments deplete, Social Security remains as the only source of income to offset some expenses, and the shortfall reflects the remaining uncovered spending goal. Retirement success is measured as having any investment assets remaining at age 95 such that there were no spending shortfalls for the simulation.

Study Number 2

The second case study is for a couple with $3 million of investment assets. As with the first study, both individuals are age 62 and have just retired. They share the same goal of funding retirement through age 95, with a secondary priority to maximize the after-tax surplus of wealth for their beneficiaries at an assumed age 95 death. Further details are shown in Table 2. The retirement assets include $800,000 in a taxable brokerage account (with a $400,000 cost basis), $1,900,000 in a tax-deferred IRA, and $300,000 in a tax-free Roth IRA. The two spouses have Social Security PIAs of $2,500 per month ($30,000 per year) and $2,000 per month ($24,000 per year). If they both claim at 62, total annual benefits with the early claiming reduction add up to $37,800. At full retirement age (age 67), total benefits are $54,000. And if they both wait to age 70 to file, total benefits increase to $66,960. These amounts are provided in current age 62 dollars, as annual cost-of-living adjustments assumed to match the consumer price index are applied in all cases.

Case Study Couple $3 Million Table 2

The projected core annual retirement expenses for the couple equal an inflation-adjusted $126,000 throughout retirement. They seek to spend an additional $25,000 per year through age 75 to better enjoy the more active go-go years of their retirement. The couple also seeks reserves to cover contingencies related to healthcare (an additional inflation-adjusted expenditure of $10,000 between the ages of 85 and 95) and long-term care (an additional inflation-adjusted expenditure of $100,000 between the ages of 93 and 95), reflecting a relatively greater concern about out-of-pocket long-term care spending than the first person. They also live in a state with no income tax, but there is a need to pay federal income taxes—an additional expense that will be included in this analysis beyond these mentioned spending goals. Taxes are calculated in the same manner as described with the first case study, and the same three asset allocation choices will be used.

Distributions

Portfolio distributions will include Roth conversions and use a blended strategy that mixes taxable and tax-deferred distributions at first, and then tax-deferred and tax-free distributions later, to provide control over the adjusted gross income (AGI) as a tax-management strategy. The retirees take any required minimum distributions from the tax-deferred account, which begin at age 72. If RMDs and Social Security benefits are less than the desired spending and federal income taxes due, additional withdrawals are then estimated to be taken from the taxable account first until empty, then from the tax-free Roth account until empty, and then from the tax-deferred account until empty.

This is a starting point for distributions. If this distribution ordering leads to less than the targeted level of AGI for managing lifetime taxes, then additional funds are taken from the IRA to offset any Roth IRA distributions and then further convert funds from the IRA to the Roth IRA to generate additional taxable income. Taxes on these additional IRA distributions and conversions are paid through further distributions from the taxable account when possible, or otherwise from the tax-deferred account when the taxable account depletes. Distributions are taken at the start of each year.

This algorithm leads spending strategies to be a blend of taxable and tax-deferred IRA assets while taxable assets remain, and then a blend of IRA and Roth IRA assets. If Social Security benefits and RMDs from the IRA exceed the desired spending level and taxes due in any year, then any surplus is added as new savings to the taxable account. The targeted level of AGI is the median level of AGI that maximizes the after-tax value of wealth at age 95 (checked in $10,000 increments).

Simulations

For the simulations, we use rolling historical periods from U.S. data since 1871. We use the tax laws and Social Security rules as they exist in early 2022. These details have been described, but it is worth emphasizing that the purpose of using historical data is not to shift back in time, but rather to provide a range of possible experiences for stock returns, bond returns, interest rates, and inflation, from the perspective of considering if these historical market outcomes began anew in 2022. For example, the simulated experience starting from 1950 just considers how a retiree in 2022 would fare with different claiming strategies under current tax rules if the retiree experienced the sequence of market outcomes that begin in 1950.

We believe that the advantages of using historical data outweigh their downsides, though Social Security delay strategies may not perform as well with historical data as they could at the present. Interest rates are well below historical averages, which benefits delaying Social Security relative to a higher interest rate environment. Nonetheless, understanding the historical performance of Social Security delay strategies is an important data point when thinking about the long-term financial im-pacts of different Social Security claiming strategies in a broader historical context.

The financial market data are freely available from Robert Shiller’s website (www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm). The historical performance is summarized in Table 3. Stocks are represented with large-capitalization U.S. stocks that eventually became the S&P 500. Since 1871, they averaged 10.6 percent returns, with a compounded growth rate over time (geometric mean) of 9.1 percent and volatility of 17.6 percent. The dividend yield on stocks averaged 4.3 percent historically.

1871-2021 Inflation data summary stats

Bonds are represented with 10-year constant maturity Treasury bonds. These bonds average 4.8 percent returns historically, with a 6.2 percent volatility. This is a bit higher than the average yield of 4.5 percent, since yields trended lower during the historical period, allowing for a higher average bond return as interest rates decline. These averages are high compared to the present, as the 10-year Treasury was yielding about 1.6 percent at the start of 2022. Inflation averaged 2.3 percent historically with a 5.9 percent volatility.

To investigate the results for different Social Security claiming strategies with these two case studies, we first focus on higher-level summary metrics and then dive deeper into the results for the case using a 50 percent stock allocation.

Table 4 provides these results for the single 62-year-old with $1 million of investment assets. This table provides results from the 118 rolling 34-year periods between 1871 and 2021. These retirement simulations require 34 years of data to cover ages 62 through 95, so the most recent of the rolling periods begins in 1988. For each of the three stock allocations and each of the three Social Security claiming strategies, the table shows: (1) the median level of AGI that maximizes the after-tax value of wealth at age 95 (checked in $10,000 increments), (2) remaining real wealth at age 85 (in age 62 dollars) to provide a sense of the strategy’s evolution at around life expectancy, (3) the real legacy wealth at age 95 (in age 62 dollars) at the 90th, 50th, and 10th percentiles, (4) the success rate for the strategy defined as the percentage of cases that the entire spending goal could be met with investment assets remaining at age 95, and (5) the percentage of the historical simulations in which claiming at 67 or 70 allowed for a higher net legacy at the end of retirement than claiming at age 62.

Case Study Single $1 Million Table 4

As we increase from a 25 percent stock allocation to 75 percent stocks, we notice several trends. First, the managed level of AGI tends to show slight increases as expected portfolio returns rise. Also, success rates tend to improve with higher stock allocations, as does the range of wealth at age 85 and final wealth at age 95 across the distribution of outcomes. Finally, even with 75 percent stocks, delaying Social Security increases final wealth about two-thirds of the time, and these percentages are even higher with low stock allocations. A more aggressive stock allocation does increase the odds of having an improved retirement outcome, but even with 75 percent stocks, claiming at age 62 only helped in a minority of the outcomes.

The cumulative real Social Security benefits through age 95 is $1.285 million when started at 62, $1.566 million when started at 67, and $1.741 million when started at 70. Breakeven ages for cumulative real benefits happen in one’s early 80s, when delaying begins to provide a larger lifetime amount. Investments must outperform these hurdles to have the early claiming strategy come out ahead over the long planning horizon. Readers may make their own judgements regarding which approach to claiming Social Security makes the most sense in this historical context and for this case study. With these results, it is likely that only individuals with high risk tolerance would even consider claiming earlier for asset maximization purposes.

Next, Figure 1 provides a deeper look at the comparison between claiming at age 70 and at age 62 when using a 50 percent stock allocation in retirement. As seen in the previous table, delaying from 62 to 70 provides larger net legacy wealth at age 95 in 76.3 percent of the historical cases. The exceptions for when claiming at 62 paid off include during the 1870s, around 1920, and in the period from the mid-1970s into the 1980s. These were periods in which market returns were strong during the first eight years of retirement when the delay happens, which lays a foundation for additional funds left in the investment portfolio to provide greater growth. Otherwise, much of the historical period shows stronger increases to legacy when delaying benefits to age 70.

Case Study Single $1 Million

Figure 2 confirms the idea that delaying Social Security works to manage retirement risk. This figure plots the net real legacy wealth for the early-claiming strategy on the horizontal axis, and the net real legacy wealth for the delay strategy on the vertical axis. Not only does this highlight that in all historical cases, the delay strategy avoided a negative legacy, but also that when legacies were otherwise smaller for both strategies because of poor market returns, the delay strategy consistently provided better outcomes. This is demonstrated with all the circled points that are above the diagonal line. Because net legacies are larger with delay when both strategies result in relatively low legacies (the circled outcomes under $1 million), we can see the risk management benefits of delayed claiming. It is only when net legacies are otherwise quite large (beginning around $1.5 million) that the delay strategy starts to fall short. But legacies were still quite large either way; the early claiming strategy only consistently wins after $2.5 million, and the relative differences between the two outcomes are quite small. Risk averse retirees will tend to prefer strategies that provide more protection on the downside, even if that means sacrificing some upside. The figure makes clear that there is risk-management value in spending down other investment assets during the first eight years of retirement to enjoy a permanently higher Social Security benefit after that point.

Case Study Single $1 Million Figure 2

Though it is reasonable to expect that delaying Social Security may give up some of the upside po-tential if financial markets perform extremely well in retirement, which is the argument sometimes made in favor of claiming early, this figure highlights the low odds for achieving a better outcome for this case study when using a 50 percent stock allocation in retirement. Claiming early can lead to a better outcome, but it is not common and should not be expected.

Table 5 continues this analysis with results for the case study with a couple holding $3 million of investment assets at retirement. Qualitatively, the results are quite similar to the first case study, though the AGI management levels and legacy values are generally scaled upward to reflect the greater wealth of this couple. It is still the case that delayed claiming improves success rates and generally supports a larger legacy at the end of retirement. Again, though success rates increase with a higher stock allocation, more exposure to market upside does provide greater opportunity for claiming early to keep more invested to experience these benefits. However, even with 75 percent allocated to stocks, delayed claiming supports greater legacy in more than 60 percent of the historical cases.

Case Study Couple $3 Million Table 5

Figure 3 provides a similar analysis comparing the claiming decisions for ages 70 and 62 when using a 50 percent stock allocation. Values above the horizontal line mean that delayed claiming provides a larger legacy, while claiming at 62 comes out ahead for values below the horizontal line. Delayed claiming supports greater legacy wealth in 77.1 percent of the historical cases, with exceptions occurring in the 1870s, 1910s, and the years around 1980. Otherwise, delayed claiming provides a better retirement outcome, and often by a notably larger degree.

Case Study Single $3 Million

Figure 4 provides the same risk management analysis for this case study. It is again the case that delayed claiming supports larger legacy values in historical cases where overall legacy wealth is on the relatively low side (less than $2 million). When legacy wealth is otherwise high, early claiming may come out ahead, but the relative differences between the two strategies are small. This again points to the risk management advantages of delayed Social Security claiming.

Case Study Couple $3 Million Figure 2

Conclusions

Delaying Social Security can be framed as longevity insurance that helps to support the increasing costs associated with living a long life. It provides inflation-adjusted lifetime benefits for a retiree and a surviving spouse, and these monthly benefits will be 77 percent larger in inflation-adjusted terms for those who claim at 70 instead of at 62. The actuarial factors supporting that 77 percent increase were designed in 1983 when longevity was shorter and interest rates were higher, suggesting at the very least that delaying Social Security and meanwhile spending down other fixed-income assets has a better than even chance of improving the retirement outcome (Pfau 2021).

But sometimes this insurance value is questioned, with the idea being that an early claiming decision will provide an opportunity for investments to grow and provide better retirement outcomes. We have analyzed this matter with historical data.

Simple extrapolations about suggesting that claiming Social Security early and investing the benefits to earn historical stock market returns miss several important points about retirement income. First, many retirees will not otherwise be investing anywhere near this aggressively in retirement. For lower stock allocations, the expected portfolio return would also be less. Second, such analysis must frame the problem within an entire retirement balance sheet that includes not just financial assets but the need to fund liabilities with those assets. The funding constraint creates additional risk that returns must materialize within shorter periods near the retirement date. A reverse legacy potentially risks the retiree having insufficient funds for living expenses.

This uncertain quest for upside growth means giving up a valuable, lifelong, inflation-adjusted in-come stream. To make risks relatively comparable, the appropriate investment would be a Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS) that provides the same inflation protection and government backing as Social Security. TIPS yields are not high enough to benefit early claiming for those living to life expectancies. To generate the returns needed to beat the benefit of delaying Social Security, there would need to be a high tolerance for risk and an aggressive asset allocation, not to mention plenty of discretionary wealth. People tend to be overconfident about their investing prowess, making it easy to fall into a behavioral trap. We do find evidence using the historical data that it is uncommon for investment returns to beat the implied benefit of delaying Social Security for long-lived retirees even with relatively aggressive asset allocation strategies.

Two important details to consider for subsequent research include, first, whether the increased present value of inflation-adjusted lifetime income that accompanies Social Security delay would allow the retiree to feel more comfortable with using a higher stock allocation with the investment portfolio. If one is comfortable thinking about Social Security as a fixed-income asset, then delaying Social Security provides a higher present value of fixed income on the household balance sheet. Delaying Social Security can increase risk capacity and reduce risk exposure for the household, which could justify a higher stock allocation than otherwise. A willingness to invest more aggressively alongside Social Security delay could be an alternative way to achieve more market growth for those who are comfortable taking on greater risk for investment upside.

In addition, this research did not incorporate a Social Security delay bridge when delaying Social Security past age 62. This increases risks related to a market downturn because the distribution rate from the investment portfolio is temporarily higher when delaying Social Security. To reduce this risk, retirees may seek to carve out a laddered bond portfolio or use some related approach such as a period-certain single-premium fixed annuity to build a floor of income to match the missing Social Security benefits so that greater short-term risks are not taken with the retirement plan . 

Pfau, Wade D., and Steve Parrish. 2023. “Which Social Security Claiming Strategy Generates the Highest Legacy Value?” Journal of Financial Planning 36 (1): 68–84.

Duffy, Sophia, Michael Finke, and David Blanchett. 2021. “The Value of Delayed Social Security Claiming for Higher-income Women.” Journal of Financial Service Professionals (September).

Elsasser, Joe. 2020, June 23. “Should You Claim Social Security Early Because of COVID-19?” The Street: Retirement Daily . www.thestreet.com/retirement-daily/social-security-medicare/should-you-claim-social-security-early-because-of-covid-19 .

Levine, Jeffrey. 2022, March 14. “Getting Clients Comfortable Delaying Social Security with Reversible Delays.” Financial Planning . www.financial-planning.com/news/getting-clients-comfortable-delaying-social-security-with-reversible-delays .

Parrish, Steve. 2020. “Dealing with the Insecurity of Social Security.” Journal of Financial Service Professionals (November).

Pfau, Wade D. 2016, June 13. “The Advantages of Monte Carlo Simulations.” Forbes .

Pfau, Wade D. 2021. Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success . Vienna, VA: Retirement Researcher Media.

Reichenstein, William, and William Meyer. 2022. “Social Security Coordination to Create a Tax-Efficient Withdrawal Strategy.” Journal of Financial Service Professionals (March).

Social Security Administration Board of Trustees. 2022. Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds . Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Stein, Michael. 1998. The Prosperous Retirement: Guide to the New Reality . Emstco Press.

Related Events

Fpa austin 2024 partner virtual ce day, may 15, 2024 quarterly education meeting, august 21, 2024 quarterly education meeting.

Financially+

Financially+

The 12 Biggest Threats Social Security Faces In 2024

Posted: February 24, 2024 | Last updated: February 24, 2024

<p>Social Security stands as a fundamental pillar of financial security for millions of Americans, yet it faces a multitude of threats that jeopardize its future stability and reliability. From demographic shifts and economic fluctuations to legislative inaction and funding shortfalls, these challenges underscore the urgent need for informed policy reforms.</p><p>Understanding these threats is crucial for stakeholders and policymakers alike as they work to ensure the program’s sustainability for future generations.</p>

Social Security stands as a fundamental pillar of financial security for millions of Americans, yet it faces a multitude of threats that jeopardize its future stability and reliability. From demographic shifts and economic fluctuations to legislative inaction and funding shortfalls, these challenges underscore the urgent need for informed policy reforms.

Understanding these threats is crucial for stakeholders and policymakers alike as they work to ensure the program’s sustainability for future generations.

<p>Social Security faces a financial challenge due to the projected shortfall in the trust funds. The gap between incoming revenues from payroll taxes and the benefits owed to retirees is growing, leading to concerns about the program’s ability to pay full benefits in the future.</p>

Funding Shortfalls

Social Security faces a financial challenge due to the projected shortfall in the trust funds. The gap between incoming revenues from payroll taxes and the benefits owed to retirees is growing, leading to concerns about the program’s ability to pay full benefits in the future.

<p>The aging of the baby boomer generation results in a higher ratio of retirees to working-age individuals. This demographic shift increases the strain on Social Security as more people are drawing benefits, and relatively fewer workers are contributing through payroll taxes.</p>

Demographic Shifts

The aging of the baby boomer generation results in a higher ratio of retirees to working-age individuals. This demographic shift increases the strain on Social Security as more people are drawing benefits, and relatively fewer workers are contributing through payroll taxes.

<p>Rising income inequality affects Social Security’s revenue. Higher earners contribute a smaller proportion of their income to the Social Security system due to the cap on taxable earnings, which in 2023 is $160,200, increasing to $168,600 in 2024​​.</p>

Income Inequality

Rising income inequality affects Social Security’s revenue. Higher earners contribute a smaller proportion of their income to the Social Security system due to the cap on taxable earnings, which in 2023 is $160,200, increasing to $168,600 in 2024​​.

<p>While COLAs are essential for maintaining the purchasing power of Social Security benefits, they also increase the financial pressure on the system. The calculation method for COLAs, tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), might not fully reflect the inflation experienced by seniors, especially in healthcare costs​​.</p>

Cost-of-Living Adjustments

While COLAs are essential for maintaining the purchasing power of Social Security benefits, they also increase the financial pressure on the system. The calculation method for COLAs, tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), might not fully reflect the inflation experienced by seniors, especially in healthcare costs​​.

<p>The Social Security trust funds invest in government securities, and prolonged periods of low interest rates reduce the investment income, exacerbating the program’s financial challenges.</p>

Low Interest Rates

The Social Security trust funds invest in government securities, and prolonged periods of low interest rates reduce the investment income, exacerbating the program’s financial challenges.

<p>Political reluctance to make the necessary adjustments to Social Security, whether through tax increases, benefit cuts, or eligibility changes, threatens the program’s long-term solvency.</p>

Legislative Inaction

Political reluctance to make the necessary adjustments to Social Security, whether through tax increases, benefit cuts, or eligibility changes, threatens the program’s long-term solvency.

<p>Recessions and economic downturns reduce payroll tax revenues due to higher unemployment rates, putting immediate pressure on Social Security’s finances.</p>

Economic Downturns

Recessions and economic downturns reduce payroll tax revenues due to higher unemployment rates, putting immediate pressure on Social Security’s finances.

<p>Increasing healthcare costs impact the Social Security Administration’s ability to manage the disability and Medicare components effectively, indirectly affecting the overall financial health of the Social Security program.</p>

Rising Healthcare Costs

Increasing healthcare costs impact the Social Security Administration’s ability to manage the disability and Medicare components effectively, indirectly affecting the overall financial health of the Social Security program.

<p>Although a relatively small percentage of Social Security payments are overpayments or fraudulent, they still represent a financial drain on the system. Efforts to manage and recover these funds are crucial for maintaining trust and integrity in the program​​.</p>

Fraud and Mismanagement

Although a relatively small percentage of Social Security payments are overpayments or fraudulent, they still represent a financial drain on the system. Efforts to manage and recover these funds are crucial for maintaining trust and integrity in the program​​.

<p>The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program faces its own set of financial pressures, with increasing claims and the need for careful management to ensure sustainability.</p>

Disability Insurance Pressures

The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program faces its own set of financial pressures, with increasing claims and the need for careful management to ensure sustainability.

<p>Misunderstandings and misinformation about Social Security’s operations and challenges can hinder constructive policy discussions and reforms necessary for the program’s sustainability.</p>

Public Misconceptions

Misunderstandings and misinformation about Social Security’s operations and challenges can hinder constructive policy discussions and reforms necessary for the program’s sustainability.

<p>The SSA must continuously adapt to technological changes and administrative demands to efficiently serve an increasing number of beneficiaries, manage claims, and maintain high payment accuracy rates​​. </p>

Technological and Administrative Challenges

The SSA must continuously adapt to technological changes and administrative demands to efficiently serve an increasing number of beneficiaries, manage claims, and maintain high payment accuracy rates​​.

<p>These challenges highlight the complexity of managing and sustaining Social Security for current and future beneficiaries. Addressing these issues requires informed policy decisions, legislative action, and ongoing public engagement to ensure the program’s long-term viability and reliability.</p><p>  <h3><strong>What To Read Next</strong></h3>   <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/this-genius-trick-every-online-shopper-should-know/?utm_source=msnfpam&utm_campaign=msnfpam">This Genius Trick Every Online Shopper Should Know</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/best-high-yield-savings-accounts-this-month/?utm_source=msn&utm_channel=2222024686">Best High-Yield Savings Accounts This Month</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/best-gold-ira-this-year/?utm_source=msn&utm_channel=2222024686">Best Gold IRA This Year</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/deals-on-popular-cruises/?utm_source=msn&utm_channel=2222024686">Deals On Popular Cruises</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/the-best-internet-deals-older-americans-need-to-take-advantage-of-this-year/?utm_source=msn&utm_channel=2222024686">The Best Internet Deals For Seniors</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/affordable-life-insurance-options-for-seniors/?utm_source=msn&utm_channel=2222024686">Affordable Life Insurance Options for Seniors</a></strong></li> </ul>  </p><p><a href="https://financiallyplus.com/?utm_source=msnstart">For the Latest Breaking Financial News, Headlines & Videos, head to Financially+</a></p>

These challenges highlight the complexity of managing and sustaining Social Security for current and future beneficiaries. Addressing these issues requires informed policy decisions, legislative action, and ongoing public engagement to ensure the program’s long-term viability and reliability.

What To Read Next

  • This Genius Trick Every Online Shopper Should Know
  • Best High-Yield Savings Accounts This Month
  • Best Gold IRA This Year
  • Deals On Popular Cruises
  • The Best Internet Deals For Seniors
  • Affordable Life Insurance Options for Seniors

For the Latest Breaking Financial News, Headlines & Videos, head to Financially+

More for You

wuYNv2QP-720.jpg

Moment Fox News takes Trump off air to fact-check South Carolina speech

14. Arizona

Republicans vote unanimously to ban basic income programs in a state with one of the highest homelessness rates

‘I gave up a job that I loved passionately’: My husband secretly set up a trust that includes our home and his investments. What should I do?

‘I gave up a job that I loved passionately’: My husband secretly set up a trust that includes our home and his investments. What should I do?

Florida’s Experiment With Measles

Florida’s Experiment With Measles

Elon Musk is looking to the right pensively with a microphone in his hand in front of a black background.

Tesla screwed a Black-owned bakery out of $16,000: ‘It felt like we didn’t matter’

A view from a drone of the Avdiivka coke and chemical plant recently captured by Russian troops in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on February 20. - Inna Varenytsia/Reuters

Two years of war for Russia has plunged the country ever deeper into darkness

Trump’s Charlie Kirk problem is an obstacle for him and the GOP

Trump’s TPUSA troubles are only getting bigger

3 things to never do at work, according to an HR professional with 10 years' worth of experience

3 things to never do at work, according to an HR professional with 10 years' worth of experience

Warren Buffett shares thoughts on Social Security

A shareholder once asked Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger if Social Security is a 'government-sponsored Ponzi scheme for retirees' — their answer was received with laughter and applause

The potato is a staple part of many food cultures, especially Ireland's

'Pretty simple' expert tip keeps potatoes fresh for months

Shreen Mahmood, ambassador for World Hijab Day

Ministry of Justice hosted speaker who said 'Jews need to get in the queue behind Muslims'

Durian cake

Cake Recall as Dire Warning Issued

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, at National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md., Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

An RNC member is trying to stop the party from paying Donald Trump's legal bills

Carry-On Baggage Has Reached a ‘Breaking Point’

The Carry-On-Baggage Bubble Is About to Pop

Valencia celebra un minuto de silencio en honor a las víctimas del incendio

Valencia celebra un minuto de silencio en honor a las víctimas del incendio

Grant Cardone: Dark skies ahead for US real estate

‘The greatest real estate correction in my lifetime’: Grant Cardone sees doom and gloom ahead for US real estate — but here’s how savvy investors can use it to ‘grab trophy real estate’

Warren Buffet's son Howard has given $500M to Ukraine — he warns the US is making a historic mistake by pulling its support

Warren Buffett's son Howard has given $500M to Ukraine — he warns the US is making a historic mistake by pulling its support

Hummingbird nest in tree

This Gorgeous Plant Is A Hummingbird Magnet You'll Want To Grow In Your Yard

Comedian Taylor Tomlinson has been open about her bipolar diagnosis in her comedy sketches. - Jason Mendez/Getty Images

What are the symptoms of bipolar disorder?

‘Loser’ fraud: Trump’s $600M tab has RNC resisting deadbeat ‘bills’ with Beyoncé energy

‘Loser’ fraud: Trump’s $600M tab has RNC resisting deadbeat ‘bills’ with Beyoncé energy

  • Skip to main content

Advancing social justice, promoting decent work

Ilo is a specialized agency of the united nations, social security for the excluded majority: case studies of developing countries.

Examines various approaches to the extension of formal sector social insurance schemes to informal sector workers.

"This book is a timely and significant contribution to the field of social work as well as social policy and social development. The list of tables (see pp. xii. & xiii) provides a very useful factual information for readers on demographic, social, economic, health and employment statistics, among others, for all five case study countries. The reader, whether a researcher, an educator, a policy maker or an international agency administrator, will find this book very informative and useful in terms of understanding some effective and innovative ways to extend social security benefits to a large number of disadvantaged population of the world especially, those who are not covered under any formal sector. ... I consider this edition by W. V. Ginneken as a significant contribution to addressing the needs of the millions of suffering humanity. In that broader sense, the book definitely makes an immense contribution to the understanding of human rights and social development today." Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, USA, March 2001

The large majority of workers in developing countries are excluded from social security protection. This book examines this problem in Benin, China, El Salvador, India and the United Republic of Tanzania, and explores ways in which governments and organizations at national and local levels can work together to bring social security protection to all. Through a series of case studies, this volume reviews various approaches to the establishment of self-financed schemes, the extension of formal sector social insurance and the improvement of social assistance schemes, highlighting those that have been most successful .

Navigation Bar For NPR site

  • Questions? Chat with us! Books or CPE CPE (offline) available Mon - Fri between 9 a.m.-7 p.m. ET" data-placement="bottom" class="chat-tooltip-top chat-link-text graybutton" id="liveagent_button_online_5731C0000008Zmi_3" href="javascript:;"> CPE

Wolters Kluwer | CCH® CPELink

Social Security Case Studies: What’s at Stake for Single, Married, Divorced and Widowed Retirees?

A comprehensive Social Security analysis and further retirement planning requires that clients estimate their life expectancy. This is not a topic most people want to think about or discuss! I recommend they use the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator at www.livingto100.com in order to help them get a more accurate estimate based on their own personal circumstances. Avoiding longevity risk, or running out of money if we live longer than expected, is an important part of Social Security planning.

Case #1: I met Karen at a local Social Security seminar we held. She is 61, single and never been married with a life expectancy of 90. Her case is typical of someone who has worked consistently throughout their adult life, earning an above average to high wage that increased over her career. Her Social Security statement listed her Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) at $2,750, the monthly amount that she would collect at her Full Retirement Age (FRA) of 66. Note: FRA is also known as Normal Retirement Age (NRA).

Karen was smart to become educated on Social Security and get advice prior to reaching age 62. By understanding her options and the financial consequences of her Social Security election decision, she was able to accurately plan her retirement date.

For singles who can do so, waiting to claim later will provide the most Social Security income over their lifetime. Approximately 42% of men and 46% of women currently claim their benefit as early as possible at age 62. For those who are able to wait, not only will their monthly amount increase each year due to Delayed Retirement Credits, but potentially higher income years could replace earlier low income years, increasing their benefit even more. See the SSA Retirement Benefits Booklet .

As a high earner with a long life expectancy, Karen’s case exemplifies the difference between claiming early or waiting to claim later. Since she planned to continue working until age 66 she did not consider claiming at age 62. Also, if she were to start collecting Social Security prior to her Full Retirement Age of 66 she would be subject to the earnings test, as shown on the SSA Earnings Test Booklet .

For Karen, waiting to claim until age 70 will give her a cumulative Social Security lifetime income of $842,520 (present value) or $42,890 per year (today’s dollars). If she claims at age 66 her annual income would be $32,490 (today’s dollars) for a total of $753,740 (present value) over her lifetime. The difference of over $10,000 per year is a significant increase and for Karen, worth waiting the 4 years to claim.

Case #2: A local CPA who had attended one of our Social Security seminars referred Mark to me. He was single, never been married, age 64 and estimated his life expectancy at age 95.

After working in private industry for most of his life, Mark had returned to school a decade before and changed his career. He was currently working as a college counselor and contributing into the State Teachers Retirement System. So he qualified for Social Security benefits and would also be receiving a pension.

This is a fairly common situation and triggers two Social Security rules, the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Mark knew that he was affected by the rules, but was having difficulty determining the exact affect it would have on his Social Security benefit. Please reference the SSA WEP and GPO Booklets for this case study.

Unless you love crunching numbers, the cases with WEP and GPO calculations are best left to software to quickly determine the optimal claiming strategy. As a general rule, it is almost always still beneficial to defer applying for Social Security for as long as possible up to age 70, but all clients have different circumstances that affect that decision.

Mark’s Social Security statement indicated that he had a PIA of $1,180. The WEP rule takes into account how many years of “substantial earnings” covered by Social Security that a person has in order to determine the reduction factor that applies to their PIA calculation.

The PIA calculation is made by separating a workers Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) into three amounts and multiplying the amounts by three factors, 90%, 32% and 15%. The three amounts are determined each year by the two Bend Points, https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/bendpoints.html . The bend points in 2016 are $856 and $5,157 and the WEP adjustment applies only to the first of these calculations.

In Mark’s case he had 18 years of work that was equal to or above the “substantial earnings” for those years. His adjustment to his PIA was therefore 40 percent, as shown on the WEP table. This means that the first $856 of his AIME is multiplied by 40% instead of 90% when calculating his WEP adjusted PIA. The reduction to his PIA is therefore approximately ($856 x 0.9) – ($856 x 0.4) = $428.

Due to the precise nature of the software calculations, the dates of application being in the future, and use of present vs. future dollars, exact benefit income amounts vary. However, if Mike begins collecting Social Security at age 66 his monthly income would be about $775 or $9,285 annually. If he is able to delay claiming until age 70 his monthly amount increases to $1,020 or $12,255 per year. The last I heard from Mark he was planning to wait until age 70 to start collecting his Social Security, which would provide him with $218,810 of lifetime income (present value).

Passage of the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act on November 2, 2015 included reforms to Social Security, in particular Section 831 – Closure of Unintended Loopholes. This new Section would phase out two claiming strategies commonly used by couples known as the “file and suspend” strategy and the ability to “file a restricted application”.

The limited 6-month window for use of the file and suspend strategy until April 29, 2016 received significant media attention and suddenly retirees who had not even heard of the rule wondered if it applied to them. The first 4 months of 2016 were therefore filled with inquiries about these rules and how they worked.

Although the majority of my cases are with married couples, no two are the same by any means. The difference in ages, earnings history, life expectancy, and whether one or both spouses may have a pension in addition to Social Security, makes each married case very unique. The following two cases illustrate how couples could, and in some cases still can, coordinate their Social Security claiming strategies to increase their total lifetime income.

Case #3: I met with Robert and Sarah in March 2016 and spent an hour reviewing the information they were looking for and how I could help them. Their first step towards a comprehensive retirement plan was to analyze their Social Security claiming strategy.

Robert and Sarah were both 65, but Sarah was about to turn 66 in early April. Since the “file and suspend” strategy would only be available to couples where one or both would be 66 or older by April 29, 2016, understanding their options in the next month or so was very important.

Both had high PIAs and since the early 2000’s their annual incomes have been greater than the Maximum Taxable Earnings. https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html. They also both planned to continue working until age 70. Robert listed his life expectancy at 84 and Sarah’s was 95.

Robert and Sarah have an adult son who had been disabled prior to turning 21. He therefore may be eligible for an adult “child’s” Social Security benefit based on his parents’ earnings once they have started receiving retirement benefits. It also allowed them, as parents, to collect “child-in-care” spouse’s benefits. Both these benefits are 50% of the parent’s PIA up to the Family Maximum Benefit (FMB) https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/familymax.html

The details of qualifying for different benefits based on a disability is a subject beyond the scope of this article however, the Benefits for Children with Disabilities Booklet is a good summary of the process. Robert and Sarah were still uncertain if the specifics of their son’s disability would allow him to qualify for benefits so we would run several scenarios assuming he either did or did not qualify for Social Security as an adult child.

The original analysis indicated a multi-step process to maximize their Social Security income benefits as a family. First, Sarah would file for benefits then immediately suspend them when she turned 66 in early April, aka the “file and suspend” strategy. By her having filed and suspended her benefits, Robert and their son were then eligible to collect spousal and adult child benefits. So in the month of April Robert would file for a “child-in-care” spouse’s benefit and Sarah was eligible to receive an adult child’s benefit for their son.

Upon turning 66 in June, Robert would file a “restricted application for spousal benefits”, also 50% of Sarah’s PIA. Use of the restricted application was required if he wanted to receive his lower spouse benefit, rather than his own higher retirement benefit.

Interestingly, the analysis indicated that Sarah should file for her own retirement benefits in November 2016 at the age of 66 ½ and Robert would switch from his spouse benefit to his own retirement benefit at age 70. He would also then become the parent to obtain their son’s adult child benefit.

Although I have listed all the various steps and applications involved in this case, it is not my intent to overwhelm the reader with those details, but merely to highlight how complicated a family Social Security case can become.

I have to admit that I am still not completely sure why Sarah claiming at age 70 would not have given them a higher amount of Social Security income. I do know that the interconnectedness of their various benefits, the fact that they were still working and earning high incomes until age 70, and the way the FMB works all combined to make this the best strategy.

Not everyone may want to “jump through the hoops” of the various applications required in a case like this. The value of detailed, precise software is that further examination of a variety of claiming age scenarios can quickly be made. In the end, the exact date to file for Social Security is a very personal decision and should be the best fit for the clients’ needs, not necessarily the exact maximum amount.

For Robert and Sarah, the analysis with their son qualifying as a disabled adult child would provide them with a lifetime Social Security benefit of over $1,700,000 (present value) with an annual income of over $90,000 (today’s dollars). Should their son not be eligible as a disabled adult child, their benefit would total over $1,300,000 and give them an annual income of about $80,000 (today’s dollars).

As is the case for all married couples, when the first one dies, the survivor “inherits” the larger of the two Social Security income benefits. For this reason it is important as a couple to plan to maximize the higher earner’s benefit since it will be the one left to the survivor.

Get the full Social Security Case Studies CPE course .

social security case study

  • Access Planning Portal
  • Planning Portal Mobile App
  • Access Tax Portal
  • Pay Tax Bill

Henssler Financial

  • Personal Finances
  • Talk to an Expert
  • Business Finances
  • WEALTH MANAGEMENT
  • MONEY TALKS
  • Planning Portal
  • Misconceptions on Social Security Benefits

social security case study

Investors have many misconceptions about retirement, but one area easily with the most misconceptions is Social Security benefits. In a recent survey, MassMutual used a true/false quiz to test near-retirees ages 55 to 65 on their knowledge of Social Security. About 53% of respondents earned a D or lower on the test.

The good news is that most understood that benefits claimed before full retirement age would be reduced; however, 26% did not know what full retirement age was. Full retirement age has been a moving target for many years, mostly because of our increased longevity and the improved health of older people. If you were born in 1960 or later, your full retirement age is 67, but that is subject to an increase by Congress. Those born between 1943 and 1959 are generally in the 66 age bracket, plus a couple of months. While everyone is eligible for Social Security benefits at age 62, the permanent reduction could be as much as 30%, depending on your full retirement age. Most survey respondents also knew that delaying the receipt of benefits until age 70 would increase the compensation.

While some investors think that the deduction or increase in benefits influences when they should apply, the truth is that it depends on multiple other factors in your life and financial plan. The decision to begin receiving Social Security is unique to your situation considering your age, if you are still working, your health, and other assets you may have available for living expenses.

Despite the reduced benefit, there are plenty of situations when an investor may find it favorable to start benefits before full retirement age, allowing invested retirement funds to continue to grow. We always recommend investing money you need for living expenses for the next 10 years in fixed-income investments that mature when you need the funds. However, if that need can be fulfilled by your Social Security benefit—even at the reduced rate—it may be advantageous to let your invested retirement money continue to grow. Planning is essential so that you know how Social Security will fit into your retirement cash flow.

One of the other widely believed misconceptions is that a recipient’s benefit will never change. Social Security benefits may be subject to income tax, depending on your other income. Benefits can also be reduced if you owe back taxes or student loans. Higher income in some years may trigger a higher Medicare premium, which is taken from your Social Security benefit. Compensation may also be increased because of a cost-of-living adjustment. Overall, your benefit can fluctuate from year to year—another good reason to work with an adviser to understand how Social Security will fit into your financial plan.

One final misconception we’ll touch on is that your benefits cannot be reduced if someone else can claim a benefit based on your work record. The Social Security Administration will always pay you what you are eligible for. Spousal or dependent benefits will not affect how much you receive; therefore, there is no need to panic when you find that your ex-spouse may be collecting based on your work record.

Navigating Social Security benefits is complicated and very specific to your situation. It is nearly impossible to provide general advice that applies to everyone. If you work with a financial adviser, you’ll likely explore several different scenarios when it comes to when you should choose to begin receiving your benefits.

If you have questions on how Social Security benefits fit into your retirement plan, the experts at Henssler Financial will be glad to help:

This article is for demonstrative and academic purposes and is meant to provide valuable background information on particular investments, NOT a recommendation to buy. The investments referenced within this article may currently be traded by Henssler Financial. All material presented is compiled from sources believed to be reliable and current, but accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The contents are intended for general information purposes only. Information provided should not be the sole basis in making any decisions and is not intended to replace the advice of a qualified professional, such as a tax consultant, insurance adviser or attorney. Although this material is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with respect to the subject matter, it may not apply in all situations. Readers are urged to consult with their adviser concerning specific situations and questions. This is not to be construed as an offer to buy or sell any financial instruments. It is not our intention to state, indicate or imply in any manner that current or past results are indicative of future profitability or expectations. As with all investments, there are associated inherent risks. Please obtain and review all financial material carefully before investing. Henssler is not licensed to offer or sell insurance products, and this overview is not to be construed as an offer to purchase any insurance products.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related Posts

social security case study

  • Pre-Markets
  • U.S. Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Futures & Commodities
  • Funds & ETFs
  • Health & Science
  • Real Estate
  • Transportation
  • Industrials

Small Business

Personal Finance

  • Financial Advisors
  • Options Action
  • Buffett Archive
  • Trader Talk
  • Cybersecurity
  • Social Media
  • CNBC Disruptor 50
  • White House
  • Equity and Opportunity
  • Business Day Shows
  • Entertainment Shows
  • Full Episodes
  • Latest Video
  • CEO Interviews
  • CNBC Documentaries
  • CNBC Podcasts
  • Digital Originals
  • Live TV Schedule
  • Trust Portfolio
  • Trade Alerts
  • Meeting Videos
  • Homestretch
  • Jim's Columns
  • Stock Screener
  • Market Forecast
  • Options Investing
  • Chart Investing

Credit Cards

Credit Monitoring

Help for Low Credit Scores

All Credit Cards

Find the Credit Card for You

Best Credit Cards

Best Rewards Credit Cards

Best Travel Credit Cards

Best 0% APR Credit Cards

Best Balance Transfer Credit Cards

Best Cash Back Credit Cards

Best Credit Card Welcome Bonuses

Best Credit Cards to Build Credit

Find the Best Personal Loan for You

Best Personal Loans

Best Debt Consolidation Loans

Best Loans to Refinance Credit Card Debt

Best Loans with Fast Funding

Best Small Personal Loans

Best Large Personal Loans

Best Personal Loans to Apply Online

Best Student Loan Refinance

All Banking

Find the Savings Account for You

Best High Yield Savings Accounts

Best Big Bank Savings Accounts

Best Big Bank Checking Accounts

Best No Fee Checking Accounts

No Overdraft Fee Checking Accounts

Best Checking Account Bonuses

Best Money Market Accounts

Best Credit Unions

All Mortgages

Best Mortgages

Best Mortgages for Small Down Payment

Best Mortgages for No Down Payment

Best Mortgages with No Origination Fee

Best Mortgages for Average Credit Score

Adjustable Rate Mortgages

Affording a Mortgage

All Insurance

Best Life Insurance

Best Homeowners Insurance

Best Renters Insurance

Best Car Insurance

Travel Insurance

All Credit Monitoring

Best Credit Monitoring Services

Best Identity Theft Protection

How to Boost Your Credit Score

Credit Repair Services

All Personal Finance

Best Budgeting Apps

Best Expense Tracker Apps

Best Money Transfer Apps

Best Resale Apps and Sites

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Apps

Best Debt Relief

All Small Business

Best Small Business Savings Accounts

Best Small Business Checking Accounts

Best Credit Cards for Small Business

Best Small Business Loans

Best Tax Software for Small Business

Filing For Free

Best Tax Software

Best Tax Software for Small Businesses

Tax Refunds

Tax Brackets

Tax By State

Tax Payment Plans

All Help for Low Credit Scores

Best Credit Cards for Bad Credit

Best Personal Loans for Bad Credit

Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit

Personal Loans if You Don't Have Credit

Best Credit Cards for Building Credit

Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower

Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower

Best Mortgages for Bad Credit

Best Hardship Loans

All Investing

Best IRA Accounts

Best Roth IRA Accounts

Best Investing Apps

Best Free Stock Trading Platforms

Best Robo-Advisors

Index Funds

Mutual Funds

78% of near-retirees failed or barely passed a basic Social Security quiz. Test your knowledge before you claim

thumbnail

  • Most people ages 55 to 65 either failed or barely passed a 13 question true/false quiz on Social Security.
  • While many near-retirees expect Social Security to be their largest source of income in retirement, they do not necessarily know how to claim to get the most benefits.
  • Test your knowledge to see how much you know about the program.

Many near retirees expect Social Security to be their largest source of income when they stop working.

Yet, those who are on the brink of their so-called golden years fall short when it comes to knowledge about the program's rules and what they can personally expect, according to a new survey from MassMutual.

When put to the test with a 13 question true/false Social Security quiz, 78% of respondents ages 55 to 65 failed or barely passed. That includes 41% who failed and 37% who got a D.

Less than 1% of the 1,500 respondents who took the quiz in January got a perfect score by answering all 13 questions correctly.

More from Personal Finance: How one beach city is helping residents age in place What happens to your Social Security benefits when you die 62% of adults 50 and over have not used professional help for retirement

This year's respondents fared worse in MassMutual's quiz than they did in 2023, when 69% either failed or barely passed.

To test your knowledge on Social Security, decide whether you think the following statements are true or false and compare your answers to the answer key below.

True or False?

1.      In most cases, if I take benefits before my full retirement age, they will be reduced for early filing.

2.      If I am receiving benefits before my full retirement age and continue to work, my benefits might be reduced based on how much I make.

3.      If I have a spouse, he or she can receive benefits from my record even if he or she has no individual earnings history.

4.      If I have a spouse and he or she passes away, I will receive both my full benefit and my deceased spouse's full benefit.

5.      Generally, if I am in a same-sex marriage, there are different eligibility requirements when it comes to Social Security retirement benefits.

6.      The money that comes out of my paycheck for Social Security goes into a specific account for me and remains there, earning interest, until I begin to receive Social Security benefits.

7.      If I get divorced, I might be able to collect Social Security benefits based on my ex-spouse's Social Security earnings history.

8.      Under current law, Social Security benefits could be reduced by 20% or more for everyone by 2035.

9.      Under current Social Security law, full retirement age is 65 no matter when you were born.

10.   If I file for retirement benefits and have dependent children age 18 or younger, they also may qualify for Social Security benefits.

11.   If I delay taking Social Security benefits past the age of 70, I will continue to get delayed retirement credit increases each year I wait.

12.   Social Security retirement benefits are subject to income tax just like withdrawals from a traditional IRA account.

13.   I must be a U.S. citizen to collect Social Security retirement benefits.

1.      True (92% answered correctly)

2.      True (84%)

3.      True (75%)

4.      False (70%)

5.      False (70%)

6.      False (65%)

7.      True (59%)

8.      True (58%)

9.      False (55%)

10.   True (53%)

11.   False (48%)

12.   False (38%) (Note: While both Social Security and IRA income may be taxed, special rules limit taxes on Social Security income to only up to 85% of benefits.)

13.   False (23%)

Social Security literacy helps you avoid 'tragic mistakes'

The question most respondents were able to answer correctly was whether their Social Security benefits would be reduced if they claimed earlier than their full retirement age. Most respondents, 92%, correctly answered that they will.

However, fewer than half of respondents, 48%, were able to correctly say whether there's a benefit to delaying benefits past age 70 — there isn't.

If you realize at, say, age 72, that there's no longer an advantage to holding off on receiving benefits, a six-month look-back period will let you recoup some of the money you would have received. But any benefits you could have received dating back longer than six months are lost, according to David Freitag, a financial planning consultant and Social Security expert at MassMutual.

Knowing your Social Security full retirement age — the point when you are eligible to receive 100% of the benefits you've earned — is necessary to make a good claiming decision, Freitag said.

Yet, almost half of near-retirees, 45%, do not know the current full retirement age.

A wave of baby boomers is expected to turn 65 in the next few years, which has been dubbed a "silver tsunami." While age 65 is when individuals become eligible for Medicare, Social Security's full retirement age is generally age 66 to 67, depending on a person's date of birth.

"The window opens at 62 and it closes at 70," Freitag said of Social Security retirement benefit claiming. "You've got to figure those decisions into that period of time, or you'll make tragic mistakes, and that's not a good thing."

Age 65 is important because the Medicare penalty can be very significant if you do not sign up for health coverage on time, Freitag said.

Figuring out what you will do about health insurance and when you plan to claim Social Security are the two anchor points from which to start in the retirement planning process, Freitag said.

"Get those two things anchored down, and then you can start to make the decisions around those two points," Freitag said.

Even as near-retirees' knowledge of Social Security falls short, 40% expect the program will be their biggest source of income in retirement. That is followed by a 401(k) or 403(b) plan, with 17%; pension, 13%; and investments, 11%.

However, 44% said they do not know approximately how much income their Social Security retirement benefits will replace. Don't miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

  • Warren Buffett's Berkshire keeps new stock pick secret — again. Here's what it means
  • Michael Burry of 'The Big Short' fame buys Amazon, Alphabet and a dozen other new stocks
  • Move over, Nvidia. There's a new hot AI play that has soared 960% in the past year
  • Morgan Stanley's Slimmon names 3 stocks to buy right now: 'It's going to be a good year for equities'
  • This little-known bank is offering one of the highest CD rates

comscore

Case Studies

The role of case studies.

One of the goals of The Open Group Architecture Forum is to provide a forum within which both customer and vendor organizations can exchange feedback and experience in the use of TOGAF.

All of this feedback is considered in the ongoing evolution of TOGAF within the Architecture Forum, and indeed much of it has already been incorporated in this current version of TOGAF.

It is important to emphasize that no case study can provide a complete blueprint for how another organization should go about using TOGAF. All organizations are different, and each organization should understand what TOGAF has to offer, and adopt and adapt the parts that are useful for its needs.

Nevertheless, over the years of its existence as an architecture framework, TOGAF has been used by a variety organizations around the world in major architecture developments, both in its entirety, and in an adapted form.

It is hoped that the case studies presented here will provide useful guidance to organizations intending to use TOGAF or considering using it to develop an enterprise IT architecture.

The formats of the case studies vary, between normal descriptive text, through presentations, and in some cases video.

The following case studies show TOGAF in use in a variety of situations.

Dairy Farm Group (Hong Kong)

The Dairy Farm Group Case Study 1 illustrates extensive use of TOGAF as the basis of an enterprise-wide IT architecture to integrate many disparate business units.

The Dairy Farm Group (DFG) is a holding company in the Retail sector. It has a very strong presence in the Asia/Pacific region, and is the 71st largest retailing company worldwide.

DFG has a corporate goal to be the largest, most successful retailer in Asia/Pacific in its chosen markets. To support this goal, DFG has restructured from a federation to a unified group of companies, with a single corporate purpose business focus, and a single IT infrastructure.

The DFG Technical Program Architecture Group (TAPG) was chartered to develop a Technical Architecture for DFG, and chose TOGAF and its supporting methodology as the basis. Using TOGAF, the TAPG was able, in a very short period of time (from July through October 1998) to develop a world-class technical architecture.

It was particularly helpful to be able to point key suppliers to a published version of TOGAF, so that they could see an explanation of the methodology and refer to the TOGAF Standards Information Base (SIB).

This Case Study has its own web site at: www.opengroup.org/public/member/q498/DFG/dfg_frame.htm .

Department of Social Security (UK)

The DSS Case Study illustrates the use of TOGAF, both as the basis of a new architecture framework, and as a key tool in managing the outsourcing of service delivery, in that vendors and integrators were required to use TOGAF as the basis for their tenders, and to use it subsequently in the ongoing management of the IT architecture.

Organizational Context

The UK Department of Social Security (DSS) is responsible for the development, maintenance, and delivery of the UK's social security program and of the UK Government's policy for child support. The DSS currently employs around 90,000 staff and utilizes the largest civilian computer operation in Europe to provide services to its executive agencies, other government bodies, and various Independent Statutory Bodies. One of those executive agencies, the Information Technology Services Agency (ITSA), is responsible for providing the necessary IT systems and services, either internally or through contracts with the private sector.

Social Security spending is approaching £100 billion a year (1999), making it the biggest single spending department in government. At any given time, 70% of the population are in contact with the DSS. In 1998 the Department:

  • Dealt with 15 million benefit claims, and 33 million changes of circumstances
  • Made nearly a billion payments (a great deal of which were handled electronically)
  • Handled upwards of 160 million telephone enquires

Existing IT

Departmental IT systems have tended to be product-based rather than customer-centered. There are separate systems for each DSS agency. In the case of the Benefits Agency, there are separate systems for each benefit. Each benefit system has evolved as a series of processes, supported by its own IS/IT. These "Benefit Chimneys" support their own individual processes, and hold their own information. The consequence is unnecessary duplication and inefficiency, between processes and functions that are, or could be, common. This is especially the case in the way that the Department uses the information it holds. This belies the fact that these systems have data and functions in common.

Strategic Objectives

Recognizing the problems inherent in a product-based approach, a Corporate IS/IT (CISIT) Strategy was developed to support government objectives for a modern, more responsive social security service. IS and IT are crucial, not just to change the Welfare State, but to fundamentally change, for the better, the way that the DSS delivers services. Within the IS/IT arena the changes have shifted the focus to the definition, and purchase, of services rather than products, and promotes a new sourcing strategy. Private sector service providers are expected to a play a greater role in the development of the Department's new IS/IT systems to capitalize on their experience, expertise, and self-financing abilities.

The welfare system must be an active system. It must be simpler, more efficient, transparent, and easier to use. It must be better geared towards the needs of the people who actually use it, be they the general public or the Department's staff. IS and IT will have a key part in enabling these changes, in that any services must be:

  • More accessible and easier to use than they are now
  • More efficient and effective
  • More accurate and less vulnerable to fraud
  • Simpler and more flexible than they are now

Central to the Corporate IS/IT Strategy is the provision of a single logical data repository capable of supporting all of the Department's core business activities. This will reduce duplication of stored data and, thus costs to the taxpayer and the potential for fraudulent claims. It will also ensure that information common to different benefits only needs to be captured once, so providing an improved service to the public.

The data will be complemented by a set of shared systems which will carry out common functions which need to be consistent, such as capturing information, calculating entitlements, and making payments. Ultimately such functions are also expected to be shared, with the intention that they maximize flexibility for, and responsiveness to, policy changes.

Greater freedom is permitted in local business practices, but local systems are required to work with the common services to provide cohesive end-to-end support of social security administration.

The UK Government as a whole is looking to new technology to improve the way government services are delivered: the Prime Minister has pledged to increase the number of opportunities for customers to access DSS services electronically. Using its Corporate IS/IT Strategy, the DSS intends to position itself to optimize its use of new technologies in order to provide better, simpler services for DSS customers and staff alike.

It is also the intention of the DSS to modernize the links that exist with other government departments and other relevant organizations, such as Local Authorities. What is needed to be achieved in social security - flexible, easy-to-use and efficient services, based on common information - needs to be achieved across government. This is known as "joined up" government and is focussed around delivering the goals of government as a whole in a seamless, integrated way. This will enable staff to concentrate on delivering a better service to clients, whilst improving efficiency and effectiveness through IT support.

The Accord Project

Realizing the Department's IS/IT Strategy will be a large and complex task that will be delivered in stages, over a number of years. These strategic aims are being taken forward by a major procurement project - the ACcess to CORporate Data (ACCORD) project. Three private sector consortia (composed of major international companies) satisfied the criteria for participation in this procurement and all have been awarded IS/IT Services Agreements under which a range of IS/IT services may be purchased. These IS/IT services may be allocated for different time periods, at the end of which time the services must be capable of being recompeted and provided by a different service provider. The DSS, therefore, is required to manage multiple service providers. It must also ensure that their services, which may run in heterogeneous environments, are capable of interacting.

Given the scale of DSS operations, the transition to CISIT-compliant systems will take place on an incremental basis over a number of years. Thus, legacy and the new IS/IT systems will be required to run in parallel and interoperate.

The Need for a New Architecture Framework

Despite the importance of ACCORD IT developments, other initiatives, both sourced from within ITSA and via external procurement routes, will inevitably occur. This dictates the need for Departmental control and the setting of a context for any development. The Department will retain strategic and management control of its architecture via the use of an architecture framework. It is intended that this framework will:

  • Provide a classification and structuring scheme within which IT applications can be placed
  • Identify those architectural components which can be used, as required, in various combinations to construct operational (sub)systems
  • Provide the reference documentation for the architecture(s) of CISIT systems
  • Provide the vehicle whereby the principles and standards of the architecture(s) are described along with their dependencies/interdependencies
  • Provide a process for developing the architecture/solutions throughout the lifetime of CISIT systems
  • Document the different perspectives of the CISIT systems
  • Support the specification of requirements and evaluation of supplier bids
  • Support the development and monitoring of contractual milestones
  • Better integration and interoperation of systems
  • Subsequent developments
  • Support re-competition (over time)
  • Change/contract management

The Department's legacy systems had been developed according to an in-house architecture framework. Rather than extend that framework, it was decided that a new architecture framework was required that more closely met the needs of the CISIT Strategy. The Department's Corporate IS/IT Architecture Framework (CISITAF) has been based on that produced by The Open Group, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) because:

  • It provides a common set of vendor-independent terminologies for documenting the Department's technical requirements.
  • It has been widely accepted within the IT industry. Due to the nature of the Departmental context, this was seen as a key advantage of using TOGAF. All SPs would have their own preference for an architecture framework; e.g., ICL would utilize Open/Framework whilst IBM would prefer Open/Blueprint. However, TOGAF is vendor-neutral having been developed with input from many leading IT companies and cognizant of the other major frameworks.
  • It complements the architecture framework upon which the Department's legacy systems are based.

CISITAF Documentation Set

It would not be practical to document the whole CISIT architecture framework within a single document. The documents that will eventually comprise the CISITAF (they will be developed along different time lines) are shown in the following diagram.

Although the CISITAF tends to place a different emphasis on the elements, it includes all of those in the TOGAF base set, namely:

  • A Technical Reference Model (TRM)
  • A Standards Information Base (SIB)
  • An Architecture Development Process

supported by descriptions of the architecture from different views.

These have been supplemented by a new framework component: the Model Technical Architecture.

Technical Reference Model

Development of the CISITAF commenced with the definition of a Technical Reference Model (TRM). Use of the TRM aimed to ensure completeness of the architectural definition, by providing a taxonomy of common terms and definitions.

It identifies the IT infrastructure services that may be required on one or a number of application platforms within the CISIT architecture.

The set of services shown is based upon the TOGAF TRM with additions to reflect DSS-specific requirements. The additional services are telephony services and workflow services.

Conformance to this model does not mean that an application will implement all or only these named services without any additional facilities. The set of services used in any situation will be tailored to meet specific business needs.

Standards Information Base

The Standards Information Base (SIB) within TOGAF comprises a comprehensive list of the standards adopted by The Open Group.

The CISITAF SIB has the same aims of promoting interoperability and software portability. However, it will focus upon Departmental technical policies and standards, together with relationships between them, which may be used to assist in the selection of standards and products.

This document will be populated incrementally as appropriate standards are identified and agreed.

Architecture Development Process

The Architecture Development Process (ADP) will describe how the CISITAF will be developed and maintained. It will also outline the stages to be followed, roles and responsibilities of relevant parties, and the products to be produced throughout the process.

Documentation of the ADP is pending the resolution of various organizational and technical issues. It is intended that it will be progressed through an Architecture Control Service.

Architecture Views

The Architecture Views describe an IT system/subsystem from different perspectives to satisfy the requirements of diverse interest groups. The CISITAF makes use of the following Views:

  • Functional View
  • Management and Operational View

Security View

  • Builder's View
  • Data Management View
  • Commercial and Contractual View
  • Computing View
  • Communications View

Essentially, these views are the same as those recommended by TOGAF, with two principal differences:

  • A consideration of operational aspects has been added to the Management View
  • A Commercial and Contractual View has been defined.

The Commercial and Contractual View is a necessary addition given that the DSS intends to implement the CISIT Strategy using a number of services/systems, potentially supplied by different service providers. It provides the perspective which concentrates on those metrics and processes that are required to support a (sub)system's commercial and contractual aspects and interface it successfully with (sub)systems provided by other service providers.

Model Technical Architecture

The CISITAF Model Technical Architecture (MTA) constitutes an addition to the standard TOGAF approach. It is complementary to the TRM in that it focuses on providing a number of models for features which may be implemented on one, or a number of application platforms. In addition, the models may be implemented by one or more IT infrastructure services on each application platform, which would reflect the TRM taxonomy.

The MTA describes the goal technical architecture for systems, which will be developed within the CISIT Strategy. Each architectural aspect is defined within a separate chapter, supported by what have been termed the "four Ps":

  • Policies are statements that (once agreed) must be adhered to in any specification, construction, and operation of a system within the CISITAF. Any proposal or bid will be assessed as to its ability to meet all of the policies.
  • Principles are the engineering principles that should be adhered to. Like all principles there are implementation options, but the underlying spirit of the principles must be adhered to.
  • Preferences are areas where the Department would prefer a particular mechanism, style, methodology, product, etc. The adoption of alternatives by service providers is possible, but convincing reasons for the adoption of any alternatives will need to be provided.
  • Propositions collect the hypotheses and ideas raised in the various areas of the model architecture. Service providers are required to consider the propositions and adopt them or articulate alternatives together with convincing reasons for the alternative.

Where more detail is required, there may be an architectural model, held as a separate document, giving more information regarding the architectural aspect, including the description, objectives, and rationale for that particular architecture. Aspects meriting such treatment include:

  • Component architecture
  • Transaction management
  • Data management
  • Interoperation with legacy systems
  • Management Information Systems (MIS)
  • Directory services
  • Workflow management
  • Output services
  • Event management
  • Data networks

In addition, the MTA specifies a number of general engineering principles, or qualities, that must be exhibited by all CISIT deliverables:

  • Scalability
  • Serviceability
  • Availability
  • Manageability
  • Auditability

Interoperability

  • Flexibility
  • Suitability

Using the CISITAF

The ACCORD procurement has proceeded in a number of stages and the CISITAF has been used, to varying degrees, in all of them.

The specification of the technical requirements has been informed by the policies and principles detailed in the MTA. In their responses, service providers have been required to commit to adhering to all the policies and principles in the CISITAF. They have had to describe how their proposed solutions satisfy the general engineering principles.

In ascertaining the capabilities of different service providers, during the initial bidding stages of the procurement, to deliver ACCORD services, Architecture Views have provided the Department with a means of eliciting full and comparable descriptions of proposed solutions. These views also provided a concise description of the technical proposals that were invaluable in allowing staff not directly involved in the procurement to quickly gain of overview of the solutions. To assist the Department in carrying out technical compliance and technical assurance, a matrix had to be provided for each product used, which detailed how that product supports the CISITAF engineering principles.

From those consortia awarded an ACCORD IS/IT Services Agreement, one, Affinity, was selected to take the lead role in delivering the initial implementations of IS/IT services. At this stage, the service provider was required to be more explicit about their proposed solutions. The CISITAF is coming to the fore in finalizing the detailed technical requirements. The MTA and its subordinate models have been used as the basis for informed, detailed consultation with the service provider. These discussions have resulted in the production of the Technical Solution Statement within which the Architecture Views are being used to document the agreed system architecture.

Continuing use of the CISITAF has been assured for the duration of the ACCORD IS/IT Services Agreements. All Service Providers, who have signed such agreements, have committed themselves to using and assisting in the development of the CISITAF so that it encompasses changes in business and IS/IT strategy.

The Department has determined that the principal way in which this will be achieved is through an Architecture Control Service (ACS), operated jointly by the Department and lead service provider, with other service providers in supporting roles. In addition to the ACCORD initiative, there are also a number of other IS/IT developments planned or currently underway. The ACS will be the authority responsible for ensuring that all providers of CISIT services, including ITSA, comply with the CISITAF standards. This is intended to facilitate the integration and interoperation of systems from different sources and maintain flexibility in the choice of supply channels.

The Department has instituted an organizational structure in order to obtain senior commitment to the ACS. An Architecture Board has been established made up of senior officers representing both the Department's IS and IT and the Department's private sector partners. The IS/IT Architecture Board will drive the strategic IS/IT Architecture activities of the Department, maintaining very close links with the business vision via the involvement of the Modern Services Team. The DSS Architecture Board is supported by an Architecture Control Team that will carry out the day-to-day activities of the ACS, including:

  • Maintenance of the Architecture Vision
  • Communication of the vision
  • Co-ordination of the architecture definition
  • Input into the process of control; e.g., liaison between the architecture board and architecture working groups
  • Supporting services; e.g., secretariat and architects-R-US (selling architects into projects)

The aim of this team is not to try and create a single architecture team, but to control the architecture via the co-ordination of the other Departmental groups. This will be achieved by the establishment of architecture working groups that will carry out the detailed technical work with the support of the architecture control team and with the authority of the Architecture Board.

Amongst the initial activities of the ACS will be the agreement and documentation of the CISITAF architectural development process and the identification of IS/IT systems to support the ACS. It is envisaged that the CISITAF standards information base will emerge from the latter piece of work.

Litton PRC (US)

Litton PRC chose the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) as a basis for its revamped internal Architecture Design Process. The Litton PRC Case Study 2 reviews the use of TOGAF within Litton PRC, and explains why TOGAF was chosen.

The Joint Engineering Data Management Information and Control System (JEDMICS) Case Study illustrates the early stages of the ADM in use on a specific project.

The JEDMICS, formerly known as EDMICS before the "joint" services status was added, is designed to provide a modern means of storing and retrieving engineering drawings and data in electronic repositories through the use of various optical, digital and magnetic mass storage devices, digitizing scanners, graphics hard copy devices, graphics display workstations, and communications devices. JEDMICS addresses the needs of the primary and secondary engineering repositories for the US Armed Services and the Defense Logistics Agency, including activities such as Navy Shipyards, Naval Aviation Depots, and Army and Air Force maintenance depots.

A key element of JEDMICS is the conversion of repositories for engineering data - which include both drawings and documents - into digital format and storing the data on optical disk to support changes in depot maintenance processes. These repositories will store 190 million engineering drawings and 500,000 technical publications. Such an extensive amount of data in JEDMICS repositories represents an enormous investment in labor and in the establishment of workflow processes to utilize that data. It is, therefore, critically important that the JEDMICS investment be kept technologically fresh. This puts tremendous emphasis on platform and software interchange and interoperability.

Definition of Existing Environment in Existing Terms

JEDMICS can be viewed as several subsystems: Input, Data Integrity, Index, Optical Storage, Graphics Display Workstation, and Output. The functional view of the JEDMICS architecture is shown in Functional View of Existing JEDMICS Environment .

The Input Subsystem is the primary entry point for scanning drawings, aperture cards, and documents into JEDMICS. The major hardware components include large-format scanners, dual-sided page scanners, and high-speed aperture card scanners.

The Data Integrity Subsystem provides for the processing of scanned images that temporarily reside on magnetic storage while awaiting quality assurance on Data Integrity Control workstations.

The Index Subsystem provides for the inquiry and access of image-related index information upon being scanned into the JEDMICS system.

The Optical Storage Subsystem provides for the storage of image data on both multiple disk autochangers, "jukeboxes", and standalone single-disk devices. The stand-alone units provide backup for the jukebox and, in addition, are a means for exchanging data between sites.

The Remote Output (Workstation) Subsystem provides the capability to access image and index data that resides in the Data Integrity Control and Optical Storage Subsystems. The Multifunction Graphics Display Workstation provides the ability to view an image and direct output to a hardcopy output device. The multifunction capability of this workstation allows the site to access different systems from the same hardware platform. The Engineering Graphics Display Workstation provides a true raster editing capability.

The Output Subsystem provides for a variety of output devices and media types for JEDMICS engineering data. Output capabilities include aperture card production, high-resolution hardcopy plotting, large-format printing, and high-speed printing.

The topology of the existing JEDMICS is shown in Existing Hardware Topology .

Restatement of Existing Environment in TOGAF Terms

The existing JEDMICS environment follows a distributed computing architectural model. A client JEDMICS application on a workstation communicates with server applications on the Index Server and Optical Data Management Server to retrieve engineering data and display it at the workstation. The Input Subsystem works as a client communicating with the Data Integrity Subsystem server to enter engineering data into JEDMICS. The data, once subjected to quality control checks, is then transferred from the Data Integrity (Pending) Server to the Index and Optical Data Management Servers to be entered into JEDMICS permanent storage.

The Output Subsystem also acts as a client to the Index and Optical Data Management Servers to output JEDMICS data. Requests for output are initiated by the Workstation client and communicated to the Output Subsystem. The Output client application requests the data from the Index and Optical Data Management Servers and outputs it to aperture cards, tapes, printers, plotters, CD-ROMs, or any other output device available to JEDMICS.

The general diagram for the JEDMICS distributed computing model is shown in JEDMICS Distributed Computing Architecture .

The existing environment can be restated in TOGAF terms using Mapping of Services to Existing Architecture that maps the existing JEDMICS components into the standard application platform services.

The standard application platform services provided in JEDMICS perform the following specific functions:

  • Data Interchange: In JEDMICS, drawings are input to the system and output from the system in C4 format, which is a tiled, CCITT Group IV bitmap encoding format service. The Data Interchange services convert the bitmap from various scanned formats into C4 format and convert from C4 format to bitmap data that can be sent to common data output devices like printers and CRT screens.
  • Data Management: These services are satisfied by an Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for the index data and Kodak KOSI optical disk management software.
  • Graphics and Imaging: Scanners and compression software services are used in the Input Subsystem and decompression software and imaging and drawing services are used by the Workstation and Output Subsystems.
  • Network: In JEDMICS all of the components use the functions provided by the TCP/IP protocol stack working over either an Ethernet or Token Ring network (depending on the user installation).
  • Object: The Index and Optical Storage Subsystems manage the drawing objects in JEDMICS and make use of Object Services.
  • Operating System: The Operating System Services are found on all of the JEDMICS subsystems.
  • Software Engineering: Although programming language compilers and GUI builders are used to develop JEDMICS, no Software Engineering Services map into existing subsystems.
  • Transaction Processing: The ORACLE RDBMS used by the Index subsystem provides these services.
  • User Interface: These functions are provided at the Input Subsystem and at the Workstation subsystem.

Views, Constraints, and External Environments

Operations view.

In the Operations view, the key operational aspect of the system is the storage of engineering data and the retrieval by users of that data. JEDMICS is designed to be the authoritative repository for all DoD engineering data. The majority of the engineering data to be stored is in the form of drawings. Drawings consist of sheets and frames of data and can have accompanying documents associated with them. Drawings and drawing sheets can be revised and the coherent basis for each set of revisions among the drawings and drawing sheets must be made. Additionally, sets of drawings or individual sheets may be associated with each other to create sets that can be used for procurement, manufacturing, and maintenance of objects described by the drawings.

Because the JEDMICS is to serve as the authoritative repository of engineering data, strict quality controls are placed on all data entering the system. This quality control function is exercised by staging input to interim magnetic storage first, and then migrating the data to optical disk for permanent storage once it has been checked. Data placed in permanent storage may be accessed by local and remote users and viewed or printed as needed. Each piece of data in the system must be able to be accessed by drawing number, manufacturer, description, and weapon system.

Management View

The management view of the system is that the user has a role in the system according to the function that they are performing. This view partitions the users of the system into the following categories:

  • System Supervisors: Control the operation of the system and assign privileges to other users.
  • Scanner Operators: Input data to the system.
  • Quality Assurance Operators: Check the quality of input data and edit as necessary.
  • Engineers: Edit the data and create new data.
  • Users: View and print the data but do not modify the data. Users can create their own associations of existing data for maintenance and procurement activities.

The security view has two types of security mechanisms. Each user has a unique user ID and password that allows him or her access to certain categories of data. In addition, each hardware device capable of inputting or outputting data has restrictions on the category of data on which it can operate. Data can be input, viewed, printed, and output only if both the user and the input/output device have the prerequisite access authority to the required categories.

Constraints

JEDMICS provides the means for the acquisition, storage, management, and distribution of engineering technical data as well as the wide variety of other published material related to the operation and maintenance of ships, airplanes, and weapons systems in the Services. With JEDMICS, this information is received, stored, accessed, and transferred digitally on optical disk.

The optical disk technology in JEDMICS is the cornerstone of the weapons system acquisition process improvements anticipated through CALS. The repositories of drawings maintained in JEDMICS are the source for the efficient distribution and sharing of the large volume of complex engineering drawings and technical data.

JEDMICS has replaced the current manual and semi-automated aperture card-based repository functions with a fully automated optical disk-based system that will enhance access, timeliness, and product quality for the primary government users of engineering drawings.

The current JEDMICS was constructed using an open systems approach to software development, the integration of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware/software, training, maintenance, site surveys, and system design plans. The JEDMICS contract included a technology refreshment clause that allowed for the incorporation of new technology as it became available. The system was initially deployed with VAX computers as the Index Server, Sun Sparc 1+ computer workstations for Editing Workstations, and Zenith 286 computers for the User Workstations. Because open system principles were adhered to during the JEDMICS design, the system has evolved to SGI Challenge POSIX index servers, Sun Sparc 5 Editing Workstations, and Pentium User Workstations. The latest software version fielded for the 36 systems in use supports both of these configurations (original VAX and current SGI), plus intermediate technical refresh configurations. Only minor software differences exist, and only because of the operating system differences between the VAX (non-POSIX compliant VMS operating system) and the SGI (POSIX-compliant IRIX operating system). A uniform software baseline is supported across all installations.

The major constraint is that the Target Architecture should be compatible with the existing hardware suite already fielded to users. COTS software already purchased and fielded with the earlier version of the JEDMICS software should also be retained in the Target Architecture. Specifically, the ORACLE RDBMS represents a significant investment and must be retained. COTS drawing viewers and editors as well as special-purpose hardware devices are not subject to redesign. The workstations and server computers have been refreshed periodically with new technology, but the current assets represent too large an investment to replace. Similarly, all of the data entered into existing JEDMICS sites must be transformed, with no loss of information, to a new Target Architecture.

The other constraints associated with the existing base of hardware and software are:

  • Existing large-format scanners which can scan paper, vellum, and mylar drawings
  • Existing dual-sided page scanners which can scan 8.5 x 11" documents at an effective rate of 1,200 pages per hour
  • High-speed aperture card scanners which scan at an effective rate of 350 cards per hour
  • All input scan devices capable of surpassing the contract-specified minimum resolution of 200 dots per inch, and support 512 x 512 tiling and software image compression based on CCITT Group IV algorithms
  • A magnetic disk storage system that temporarily holds scanned images while awaiting quality assurance on Data Integrity Control workstations - the primary processing steps include quality assurance verification of image and hollerith index data, and the migration of images to permanent optical storage
  • A COTS relational database and forms processing software used for the Index Subsystem
  • Optical Storage Subsystems used to hold image data on both multiple disk autochangers, jukeboxes (14-inch platters), and standalone single-disk devices (14" and 5.25"). The jukebox is capable of handling the storage for up to 6 million JEDMICS images. The stand-alone units provide backup for the jukebox and, in addition, are a means for exchanging data between sites.
  • Existing Workstation Subsystems that are used to edit and quality control scanned images - the multifunction capability of this workstation allows the site to access different systems from the same hardware platform; existing Engineering Graphics Display Workstations provide a true raster editing capability
  • Output devices that include aperture card production, high-resolution hardcopy plotting, large-format printing, and high-speed printing - the Aperture Card Plotters collectively have the capability to produce 200 aperture cards per hour from images stored on JEDMICS; the main feature of the high-Resolution plotter is the capability to output drawing sizes A through K

A final business process constraint is that the old and new software systems must coexist during the transition period of all 36 sites.

Besides the constraints that the existing COTS hardware and software impose, certain business goals and objectives also affect the Target Architecture. As part of the most recent change in system specifications, the JEDMICS customer has specified that the software be redesigned using object-oriented programming models and the DOD-STD-2167A lifecycle methodology. (The DOD-STD-2167A lifecycle is a formal "waterfall" software development model designed to produce maintainable, complete, and correct software systems). The motivation for using object-oriented programming models was the desire to increase the maintainability of the software in the future and to provide sufficient isolation layers to allow the system to evolve as a repository. Because of the aging base of fielded weapon systems, engineering data contained in JEDMICS repositories will still be providing long-term support to users well into the next century.

External Environments

The network used at each JEDMICS site is part of the local environment and, as such, the existing JEDMICS coexists with other networked systems and equipment. The new Target Architecture will also be required to fit into existing external environments without disruption of the site's other missions. JEDMICS, within certain limits, also must be portable to user provided workstations and other equipment such as printers and plotters. The data created using the existing JEDMICS software must be transferable to the new JEDMICS Target Architecture without any data loss and with a minimum of disruption.

Target Architecture

The Target Architecture for the new JEDMICS software followed a number of goals:

  • Make maximum use of existing equipment
  • Follow open system precepts for portability, interoperability, and vendor-independence
  • Use object-oriented database techniques to isolate specific technology choices
  • Use COTS software to lower conversion costs

Based on the analysis of the user functional requirements, the new JEDMICS subsystems were partitioned along object-oriented boundaries. The subsystems in the Target Architecture are:

  • Session Management subsystem - handles all user-level interaction in a consistent manner.
  • Distributed Object Management subsystem - manages all of the engineering data contained in JEDMICS regardless of specific location.
  • Drawing Management subsystem - maintains all of the special relationships associated with drawings, drawing sheets, drawing revision, and accompanying documents.
  • Input and Output subsystem - handles all input and output of data to JEDMICS in a uniform and consistent manner.

The target JEDMICS environment still follows a distributed computing architectural model. A client JEDMICS Session Management application on a workstation communicates with the Distributed Object Management server application to enter and retrieve engineering data on the Index Server and Optical Data Management Server. This engineering data is displayed at the workstation. The Session Management application can also communicate with the Drawing Management application to request or set the various drawing management relationships. The Input and Output application works as a client communicating with the Distributed Object Management server application to enter engineering data into JEDMICS. The Distributed Object Management server application makes use of an RDBMS (Oracle - existing) and a network data object manager (SQL*NET - new) to store data in JEDMICS.

The Input and Output Subsystem also acts as a client to the Distributed Object Management server application to output JEDMICS data. Requests for output are initiated by the Session Management application client and communicated to the Input and Output Subsystem. The Input and Output client application requests the data from the Distributed Object Management server application and outputs it to aperture cards, tapes, printers, plotters, CD-ROMs, or any other output device available to JEDMICS.

The general diagram for the new JEDMICS distributed computing model is shown in The New Distributed Computing Architecture .

The functional components of the new JEDMICS system architecture are shown in The New JEDMICS Functional Architecture .

Using object-oriented methodology, the functional architecture becomes simpler and more direct. The Target Architecture will use these standards for each of the Application Platform Services:

The migration phase will require moving the 36 sites from their old system to their new Target Architecture. One of the elements that will simplify the transition is the decision to maintain all of the drawing images saved on optical media in their current raster format. While images remain the same, the index structure in the Oracle database will be radically changed. This will necessitate the transfer and conversion of all currently entered drawing index data into the new object-oriented database structure. A separate conversion effort will address these activities. The implementation of the conversion will require that both the old and new software architectures will be briefly run in the same user environment.

New software COTS products will be installed at the sites during migration, and translation software will be in operation to allow interoperability between sites running the old and new architectures.

Ministry of Defence (UK)

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) Case Study shows how the ADM can be used to develop an organization-specific architecture framework, allowing independent operating divisions to develop their own architectures while ensuring that they share a common core operating environment.

Executive Summary

The UK MoD recognizes the value of a standards-based approach to achieving interoperability between defense communications and information systems (CIS). It has established a CIS standards organization comprising the Defence CIS Standards Executive Group (DCISSEG), the Defence CIS Standards Committee (DCISSC), and the Defence CIS Systems Board (DCISB). The DCISSEG includes members from all the MoD sectors and formulates standards recommendations and guidelines based on achieving business goals of interoperability and reducing costs.

The DCISSEG has defined a Defence CIS Technical Reference Model (TRM) which is based on the NATO Open Systems Environment Technical Reference Model (NATO OSE TRM). The DCIS TRM meets the MoD's CIS requirements, and at the same time is open, aligned with the marketplace, and in a position to incorporate future developments in technology. Population of the DCIS TRM with appropriate open system standards has generated the Defence CIS Framework for Standards, Profiles, and Products (DCISF) which provides the basis for the design of all future MoD CISs.

The DCISF has been applied in the procurement of an operational system for the RAF. A standards-based architecture was derived from the DCISF and written into the project procurement specification. This proved to be effective in ensuring that the future system would be compliant with the DCISF. The approach was rather ad hoc , however, and highlighted the need to define architectures that could be used for communities of CISs. Such architectures are called Common Operating Environments (COEs) and the MoD is in the process of defining an initial COE that will be applicable to all operational CISs.

Laying the Foundations

The first step along the road to achieving communication and information system (CIS) interoperability in the MoD involved two key activities:

  • Providing motivation for the work: The MoD recognized the need for a common reference model and standards framework for guiding CIS projects, with the aim of improving interoperability, portability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of procurements. In order to exploit its emerging common user infrastructure, the MoD had to make use of COTS products based on open system standards.
  • Creating a CIS architecture and standards organization within MoD: The Defence CIS Standards Executive Group (DCISSEG) and its parent bodies, the Defence CIS Standards Committee (DCISSC) and the Defence CIS Systems Board (DCISB), were charged with delivering the required reference model and standards framework. The core personnel were drawn from all MoD sectors, including the Procurement Executive, Navy, Army, and Air Force sectors. They provided the necessary seniority, experience, technical authority, and ability to communicate with a wide range of interested parties including potential users, project managers, policy-makers, and technical experts outside the group.

Constructing the Model

The next step was to define a DCIS TRM. A TRM is a model representing an abstraction of an IT system. It assists in understanding and identifying the basic building blocks of an IT system but is not populated with standards and does not contain guidance on application. The benefits arising from the use of a TRM include the following:

  • It enables the technical strategy for future purchases and migration to be set out.
  • It simplifies system procurement since it provides a ready-made structure for specifying CIS requirements.
  • It exposes the interfaces between the building blocks of a system, leading to improved interoperability, application portability and software development, re-use, and maintenance.
  • It provides a coherent view of the whole system, leading to a better understanding of issues such as security and management which are pervasive throughout the system.
  • It permits existing systems to be described clearly and in a standard way.

There were several existing TRMs on which the DCIS TRM could have been based. The choice of TRM was guided by the following considerations:

  • The TRM should be open, widely supported, and aligned with the marketplace.
  • It should be capable of meeting the majority of military requirements.
  • There should be a commitment by the "owners" of the TRM to maintain it and allow future developments in technology to be incorporated.

The above considerations led to the adoption of the NATO Open Systems Environment (OSE) TRM as the basis for the DCIS TRM. The NATO OSE TRM aligns well with The Open Group TRM, thus ensuring that the first of the above criteria is met. At the same time, the NATO OSE TRM has been developed within an international military context. Finally, NATO is committed to maintaining the TRM and keeping it in step with changing technology.

The following amendments were made to the NATO OSE TRM in order to meet with the UK MoD's requirements:

  • A Physical Environment component was added, mainly to meet the needs of the Army sector.
  • Elements within the Application Software Entity were re-grouped, in order to reflect MoD's view of support applications.

The DCIS TRM is represented in DCIS TRM .

Further information about the definition of the DCIS TRM can be found in Volume 2 of the DCIS Standards Guides.

Building the Framework

This step involved the population of the DCIS TRM with relevant open system standards wherever possible. The resulting framework is the Defence CIS Framework for Standards, Profiles, and Products (DCISF) as detailed in Volume 3 of the DCIS Standards Guides.

Population of the DCIS TRM required suitable standards to be identified and placed within each of the IT Service components of the TRM. The standards selected were intended to be neither exhaustive nor unique. A relevant standard would be included in the DCISF if it was judged to meet the following selection criteria (as applicable):

  • Promotes interoperability
  • Enables people portability
  • Enables application portability
  • Has market support
  • Is technically consistent with the DCIS TRM and other DCIS standards
  • Is consistent with other relevant MoD initiatives

The standards were categorized according to their status. For example, "Recommended" standards were assessed to meet the relevant selection criteria in full; "Emerging" standards met most of the selection criteria, but represent a higher risk, owing to their lack of maturity and stability.

The population of the TRM with open system standards was based on a consensus within the MoD CIS community. This consensus was achieved through a series of technical workshops held by DCISSEG, attended by representatives from each of the MoD sectors.

Defining an Architecture

This step involved the application of the DCISF to an MoD project. The purpose of this was two-fold:

  • To offer the relevant project the benefits of using the DCIS TRM and DCISF
  • To validate the DCISF through its application to a real project

The general benefits that are brought to a CIS procurement from the use of the DCIS TRM and DCISF include the following:

  • Greater clarity and quality of the architecture and standards sections of the Invitation to Tender and the tenders
  • Ease of tender assessment since a standard structure is adopted
  • Improved technical communication with industry since a standard vocabulary is adopted

The project concerns an operational CIS being procured for the RAF. The project team sought advice from the RAF Sector Interoperability Authority (SIA) on the specification of technical standards for the system. The RAF SIA is the focus for IT architectures, standards, and interoperability within the RAF Sector and provides RAF representation within the DCISSEG. The RAF SIA were ideally placed, therefore, to apply the RAF Sector Technical Architecture Framework (RAF STAF), which is based closely on the emerging DCISF, to the project.

Key features of the system technical architecture are its graphical and geographical services, its interfaces with external systems, and its security requirements. The system standards specification was prepared by the RAF SIA in close consultation with the project team. The structure of the standards specification is aligned with the structure of the DCIS TRM, and the technical standards constitute a profile of standards from the DCISF, tailored to meet the system's requirements. The standards define an implementable and system-specific architecture, derived from the overarching DCIS standards framework. Thus, the system will be able to interoperate with future systems that are also compliant with the DCISF.

In conclusion, the application of the DCISF in defining a system-specific architecture for a real CIS project proved to be effective. The approach used was rather ad hoc , however, and this points to a requirement for a more systematic way of defining standards-based architectures for CIS. The answer is to define Common Operating Environments (COEs). A COE is an agreed specification derived from a framework of open standards which is applicable to CIS within a particular community. A COE is defined once, and applied many times, as CISs within a particular community are procured. The MoD is in the process of defining COEs, starting with an operational COE.

The Way Forward

The following future MoD CIS interoperability activities are identified:

  • Maintain the DCIS TRM.
  • Maintain the DCISF in line with MoD business requirements and market developments in CIS standards and products.
  • Continue to apply the DCISF to CIS projects in the near-term, using the initial application to an operational CIS as a model.
  • Complete the definition of the operational COE and begin to define other COEs as required. In particular, there is a requirement for an overall Defence COE, the Defence Interoperability Environment (DIE), which will provide Intranet-type services such as wide area networking and messaging to the vast majority of MoD CISs.
  • Apply the MoD COEs to future projects.

NATO (Belgium)

NATO's example illustrates the development of Target and Transitional Architectures in the context of overall enterprise architecture.

Within NATO the two Strategic Commands (ACE and ACLANT) are equipped with different C2-systems: basically Allied Command Europe - Automated Command and Control System (ACE-ACCIS) for ACE and Maritime Command and Control System (MCCIS) for ACLANT.

In reaction to the NATO Washington Summit (April 1999) a double convergence between ACE and ACLANT on the one hand and between the Command and Control Systems and the Management Information Systems (MIS) on the other hand has been initiated in order to improve the interoperability and the cost-efficiency of these systems. As the combination of the C2-services and MIS-services is called Automated Information System (AIS), the common system target between the two Strategic Commands is therefore called Bi-SC AIS.

In practice the convergence is envisaged incrementally, whereas the first implementation target revolves around a common "core capability". Such a concept is close to The Open Group's Boundaryless Information Flow initiative and consists of harmonizing/standardizing the foundation IT services throughout the two command structures and also implementing common applications where possible.

The applications are categorized into:

  • Core applications, which are general-purpose applications that are built on the basis of "off-the-shelf" packages (typical examples are Military Message Handling, Document Management, or Enterprise Management)
  • Functional applications, which are business-specific applications in support of the military functions (typical examples are OPS-, INTEL-, or LOG- applications in support of operation control, intelligence, or logistics)

The breakdown of the overall AIS target into "implementation segments", the articulation of these segments, and the planning and management of their implementation, are of course many issues which cannot be successfully addressed without a sound and comprehensive architecture of the system targeted.

In order to avoid a "big-bang" development of such a Target Architecture, which would be almost mission impossible at this scale, the architectural process has been divided into two parallel development activities with different objectives and scopes, namely:

  • A high-level Target Architecture, describing the key objectives of the system for the next six years. Its development is mainly top-down out of the strategic objectives of the commands or the operational and policy requirements.
  • A Transitional Architecture, describing the services targeted for the near term and the transitions from the existing system baseline. Such a Transitional Architecture is developed as an extension to the previous architecture but also accommodates a bottom-up approach, in order to capture the migration constraints and the lessons learned from the fielded baseline.

The respective customers of these two kinds of architectures are the "stakeholders" on the one hand and the end users and implementors on the other hand.

As explained in Time Horizon : "In such an approach, the Target Architecture is evolutionary in nature, and requires periodic review and update according to evolving business requirements and developments in technology, whereas the Transitional Architectures are (by design) incremental in nature, and in principle should not evolve during the implementation phase of the increment, in order to avoid the "moving target" syndrome. This of course is only possible if the implementation schedule is under tight control and relatively short (typically less than two years)."

An Implementation Plan, which both considers the operational priorities and the architectural constraints, and consequently defines the optimal implementation sequence, is required to transition from an agreed high-level Target Architecture to a Transitional Architecture dedicated to the first implementation target.

The following figure illustrates the above considerations and stresses the role of the Architects, who mediate between the stakeholders and implementors and are supposed to maintain the consistency of the whole edifice. They typically aim to reduce the latent gap or lack of understanding between stakeholders and implementors that is caused by the increasing complexity of their respective activities.

The high-level Target Architecture of the Bi-SC AIS has been developed and endorsed in the years 2001 and 2002, and has entered a maintenance process, whereas the Transitional Architecture for the first Bi-SC AIS implementation target has been initiated.

The architectural consistency of these two architectures is largely based on the following factors:

  • They both use the same "NATO Architecture Framework" which is in fact a customization of the US-C4ISR (also described in C4ISR Architecture Framework ) to the NATO context. The breakdown of the architectural descriptions into "operational", "system", and "technical" views, combined with the development of standard "architectural templates", establishes a common language between the architects and a sound means of communication with the stakeholders.
  • They also make use of the same "NATO C3 Technical Architecture". This is an architectural design and implementation guidance for the development of System and Technical Views of C3 (Command, Control, and Communications) systems. It includes a detailed TRM, an inventory of standards, and guidelines/directives to develop "interoperability profiles", implement system building blocks, and eventually select software products. The NC3TA is based on the US DoD TRM and DII COE, but has evolved to incorporate the needs of NATO nations as well as Australia and New Zealand.
  • Last but not least, there is a tight collaboration between the architects involved.

The adoption/customization of a comprehensive architectural methodology, which would formally relate all the architectural tasks and make the linkage with the implementation projects, is still an issue. There is still some risk for a Target Architecture to be misinterpreted by implementors, whereas its traceability with the strategic objectives and mapping with the operational requirements remain both critical.

The TOGAF ADM is considered as a valuable starting point for the methodology, due to its adaptability and comprehensiveness. The concept of system "building blocks" is perceived as crucial to manage the interdependency between the aforementioned Target Architectures and to communicate with the users and implementors. Moreover, the latest release of the ADM (Version 8) explicitly supports an incremental approach and makes use of the IEEE Std 1471 concepts (stakeholders, views and viewpoints, etc.) which are fully applicable to a large organization like NATO.

The current architectural development is based on the following paradigms.

The architectural description is broken down into three views:

  • Operation view (equivalent to the Business Architecture, in TOGAF terms)
  • System view (the combination of the Applications and Data Architecture)
  • Technical view (equivalent to the Technology Architecture)

The three architecture views are described in three distinct levels of abstraction (conceptual, logical, and physical) which enables a progressive development and facilitates the validation/exploitation of the architectural description. It is indeed no use developing a logical description of a view if the underlying concepts are not clear or agreed. The same way, a detailed physical description of a view, which deals with the site characteristics, is only possible when a common logical description is agreed.

The following figures describe the expected properties of the architectural rows and columns.

Such a model, based on a 3-by-3 matrix, is also likely to facilitate the maintenance of the architectural descriptions and the consistency of the whole architectural process. A detailed mapping of this model with the aforementioned (NATO or US-C4ISR) "architectural templates" is available but exceeds the scope of this Case Study and is replaced by the following figure, which gives an overview of the internal structuring of the architectural description.

The linkage of architecture with its environment is perceived as follows.

Some underlying "principles and objectives", derived from the stakeholders' views, pertain to the whole architectural model, whereas the operational context, the feedback from the fielded baseline, the "state-of-the art", or the user or system requirements apply to the model as follows:

Police IT Organization (UK)

The UK Police IT Organization (PITO) used TOGAF as the basis for the Technical Architecture for its National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS).

The NSPIS Case Study includes a comprehensive approach to architecture views, and a methodology for ensuring interoperability between the building blocks of the final architecture.

The UK has some 43 police forces. Each one has a different way of doing basically the same job and the authority to purchase what it likes, when it likes, and from who it likes. It is not surprising therefore that there is a whole variety of IT solutions to meet the business need. In addition there are national systems and networks that connect to the local force systems. The most notable is the Police National Computer connected over a facilities managed Police National Network.

Objectives of NSPIS

  • Rationalize Data Structures
  • Effective Pricing
  • Future Proofing

The police business has identified 38 varied application areas. The NSPIS applications include personnel, accounting, invoicing, case preparation, command & control, crime & incident reporting, custody, etc. The applications can be grouped into business domains. These domains or business groups are likely to contain some commonality of architecture and application functionality which distinguishes them from other domains. It is acknowledged that over time each domain will change due to new additions and re-arrangements of the current set.

In bringing solutions to market, we need to be aware of the high degree of interoperability demanded by the business, both between forces and between applications, both intra and inter-force in order to reduce cross-boundary effects. In order to move forward, the Home Office is not in a position to dictate how things should be. In essence there must be a local and central partnership, together with a commitment at all levels to support the formal strategy agreement. In order to achieve this, we must promote all aspects of the strategy not only to the local forces as the prime users, but to the suppliers who will need to be taken on board during application procurement.

The purpose of the technical architecture is to:

  • Provide the format and documentation standards for the technical constraints applied to the NSPIS application procurements
  • Assist the application procurement process by describing an advocated set of technical development and software procurement options in a standard fashion
  • Describe the products and standards used by each NSPIS application

The NSPIS technical architecture is also intended as an aid to discussions with suppliers when it is important to ensure that:

  • Parties are clear on what constitutes conformance to the NSPIS technical architecture.
  • Queries on NSPIS technical issues and other requests are handled uniformly.
  • An appropriate level of liaison and negotiating presence is provided.
  • Change control records are kept and maintained.

The NSPIS technical architecture advocates services (i.e., components and products) that support the policy laid down by the technical design authority. Currently the architecture must conform to the following properties:

  • Multi-tiered client/server
  • Distributed
  • Modular/re-usable components-based
  • Based on common APIs
  • Able to interwork with other NSPIS systems/components
  • Multi-vendor; i.e., open and heterogeneous

The NSPIS technical architecture is based on The Open Group Architecture Framework Reference Model with additions made to reflect the set of services required by the NSPIS recommended applications.

The NSPIS technical architecture is, in principle, the optimum way to achieve the objectives of interoperable, portable, scalable systems by means of an advocated set of services using open architecture standards. However, practical consideration should also be given to each architecture components:

  • Degree of completeness - how tried and tested is the service?
  • Degree of certainty - how mature is the service?
  • Likely longevity - what is the predicted future market position of the service?
  • Cost - what is the life-time cost across the range of applications?

To provide a complete, cost-effective architecture, it may be necessary to pursue a "shades of openness" policy that includes the pragmatic use of proprietary products with an awareness of "lock-in" issues. Wherever possible, the NSPIS technical architecture will recommend a single choice of component with the lowest predicted obsolescence factor. Where a single recommendation is not possible, a range of advocated options that conform to the technical architecture may be given instead. Procured applications are required to adhere to the NSPIS technical architecture recommendations and standards profile outlined within this document. Furthermore, the framework will be used to assist in the development and evolution of all future NSPIS applications services requirements.

NSPIS Technical Architecture Manual

The NSPIS technical architecture is described in three volumes:

  • Volume 1: Overview has the rules and guidelines and defines the platform services. It covers the principles which form the basis of the NSPIS technical architecture and the way in which it is intended to be used and maintained. The appendix has a profile of available services and standards and contains general NSPIS requirements and a methodology for selection and conformance.
  • Volume 2: Generic Architecture contains the mandated platform services and the range of allowable standards. Also, the architectural requirements to satisfy the user requirements and the conformance criteria. This document is the technical architecture requirements and constraints for NSPIS application procurement.
  • Volume 3: Application-Specific Architecture is the supplier's response to the user and technical requirement and contains a complete list of platform services and the relationship between the components chosen, together with a description of the hardware and communication environment required to deliver the performance and scalability. The application-specific architecture describes the complete architecture for each application and forms the basis of the subsequent configuration management. There will be an application-specific architecture associated with each NSPIS application and it will contain all the elements recommended to implement the service provided under the NSPIS framework agreement. The supplier's application-specific architecture forms the basis of the technical evaluation and the conformance test quote. It informs the evaluation of future generic components and helps define acceptance and conformance tests.

The technical architecture documents are intended for use by members of the NSPIS community in NSPIS projects, and in any subsequent implementations including the maintenance and operations of NSPIS products. The NSPIS community includes:

  • IT Managers
  • Project Managers
  • NSPIS Program/Project Teams
  • Procurement and Contract Managers
  • Technical User Group
  • In-house Development Teams
  • Configuration Managers

Additionally, this framework may also be referenced by individual purchasers at force level. Teams using the NSPIS framework should remember that these guidelines are a coherent and integrated framework that should be used in their entirety. To use the criteria in an ad hoc fashion like a "pick-list" will represent non-compliance and compromise interoperability.

Applying the Framework

The NSPIS technical architecture is a set of components and a specification of how these components are connected to meet the overall requirements of NSPIS. The following are a set of principles for the application of a component-based approach:

  • The architecture need only contain components to implement those framework services that it requires.
  • Components may implement one, more than one, or only part of a service identified in the framework.
  • Components should conform to standards relevant to the services they implement.

At least four complementary and simultaneous mechanisms are seen as contributing to the definition of the components making up the overall NSPIS Architecture Framework, and each application-specific architecture.

These mechanisms are:

  • By theoretical debate, evaluation, and choice
  • Competitive procurement through infrastructure projects
  • Evaluation and selection of options provided by the application procurement process
  • Selection of components and APIs during application system build.

Under this arrangement, potential components and APIs of the technical infrastructure could be in one of the following states of procurement:

At the award of contract we would expect to see the application-specific component being mandated but not necessarily immutable; i.e.:

At system build, final decisions would be taken with reference to those components initially allowed freedom of choice (i.e., not defined or optional) and decisions made whether to embrace any of them in the NSPIS Generic Application Platform. At conformance testing, performance testing, and live running, a formal evaluation of the future status of all components would be made to update in particular the generic application component services by addition, subtraction, or substitution. Each procurement process will generate new releases of the technical architecture and each application system build and test will influence future changes. An overview of the role of the technical architecture in the procurement process is shown in the figure below.

All suppliers who respond to procurements are given the opportunity, indeed are required, to submit their application-specific architectures. This allows the opportunity to refine, further develop, and recommend alternatives or substitutes to the Generic Architecture.

There are four basic migration models that can be defined:

A Force has two environments, a Force-specific environment and its NSPIS environment, and it gateways between these two environments.

This model is applicable when the Force's current environment has no reasonable evolution to the NSPIS world, and the investment in current systems mean that a radical change to build a complete Force environment conforming to the NSPIS technical architecture is untenable.

A Force has an environment based on NSPIS-compatible operating systems and networks - e.g., UNIX and TCP/IP - but has NSPIS and legacy applications working on a variety of platforms at the middleware level within this environment.

A Force has not only an NSPIS-compatible environment, but conforms at the application platform level, with services and components compatible and based on the NSPIS technical architecture at the middleware level.

Force either modifies existing legacy applications or acquires non-NSPIS applications which use or replace interfaces defined within implemented NSPIS applications.

NSPIS Technical Reference Model

This section contains descriptions of the Application Platform component complete with approved or contender standard, service, and product names.

This section describes the Technical Reference Model (TRM), a more detailed view of the Logical Framework. The purpose of the TRM is to allow components of an existing or planned information system and the relationships between components to be recorded in a consistent manner.

The following diagram shows the TRM complete with the classes or types of services within the recommended categories on the Application Platform.

The set of services shown here is based upon TOGAF TRM with additions to reflect NSPIS-specific requirements. The additional NSPIS-specific services are Intranet Services, Telephony, MIS Services, Workflow Services, GIS, and Mobile Radio Services. These are services which would normally exist in more than one service category and/or in the Application Software tier. At this level of detail the framework depicts entities, interfaces, and service areas only and does not imply inter-relationships between the service areas.

Conforming to the model does not mean that each application will implement all or only these named services without any additional facilities. The intention of the NSPIS TRM is that applications will use a set of services tailored to their specific business area needs.

Each service within the application platform is described under four headings:

  • Mandated Components
  • Approved Components
  • Interoperable Components
  • Illustrative Components

The component definitions and standards profile are maintained as a reference as standard definitions for NSPIS suppliers and Police IT community. Inclusion does not imply selection. Conforming to the model does not mean that each application will implement all or only these named services without any additional facilities. The intention of the NSPIS TRM is that applications will use a set of services tailored to their specific business area needs.

It is important that the components on the application platform are able to interoperate and do not mutually interfere one with the other. To this end, suppliers fill in an interoperability matrix which contains rows of all the application-specific components and columns of all the application-specific components, other generic components, and any other components used by other NSPIS applications which are not already included. (See table below.)

Suppliers indicate by a tick whether they interoperate with the other components. If they do not interoperate directly but through another (intermediate) component listed, then the reference number of that intermediate component is inserted in the box. Where they do not interoperate, a cross is inserted.

Design templates for the Interoperability Processes in each application will be developed in conjunction with the application project teams before full proposals. Suppliers indicate the components involved in providing interoperability with other NSPIS applications, that is:

  • Desktop-to-application interoperability
  • Application-to-application interoperability
  • Application-to-database interoperability
  • Database-to-database interoperability

Technical Requirements and Views

Suppliers will be asked to respond to technical requirements under business, information, application, and engineering headings for each of the number of views.

The Requirement Views are a definition of the architecture in terms of the requirements that they set out to satisfy. Each requirement is broken down and considered under four headings: Business requirement, Information requirement, Application requirement, and an Engineering requirement. Within each of these requirements it will specify if it is:

There are 10 views, each with the four requirements. They are: User, Organization, Management, Operations, Processing Platform, Integration, Data Management, Security, Contract, and Service Delivery. This produces an 4 X 10 matrix. (See below.)

As well as taking account of all the requirement views when selecting, implementing, and using the components of the application platform, the selection must take account of how well the components work together and what effect the choice one might have on the freedom of choice of another service. To assist in this choice, the application platform before and after each choice is compared using the metrics generated from each analysis. The analyses include gap analysis, value analysis, and risk analysis.

Whilst suppliers and integrators have necessarily to be constrained in their choice of application platform to ensure interoperability and portability, it is important to its relevance over time that suppliers are given every opportunity to comment on and submit alternative preferred or more appropriate components. This is particularly important where standards are immature, difficulties of component interoperability are being experienced, or mandated and preferred components are nearing obsolescence or irrelevance. Similarly suppliers, IT departments, and users must be able to exploit new methods and technology paradigms and incorporate them into the architecture without compromising the current applications or architectures.

The Architecture in Action

Suppliers respond to the technical architecture at specific stages within the NSPIS application procurement and implementation cycle. Each differs in detail depending on the procurement route adopted for each application and the type of product sought.

All NSPIS suppliers need details of each other's application-specific architectures to enable interoperability and consistency of change control. Mechanisms to achieve the desired level of co-operation and visibility of design are required from the NSPIS supplier community, PITO, and NSPIS application projects. These mechanisms are set up and further developed in conjunction with existing NSPIS suppliers and those suppliers short-listed and subsequently awarded NSPIS contracts. The selection and subsequent implementation of each NSPIS application platform informs subsequent selections and direction. NSPIS suppliers and the conformance testing agency are contributors to the debate with PITO and the Technical User Group.

QA Consulting

QA Consulting are a UK consultancy and training company whose mission is to improves IT effectiveness within large organizations. The company's focus is on enhancing the skills of people - optimizing human capital investment, and providing IT expertise that complements in-house skills. The company is the UK's No.1 IT Trainer, with 400+ Courses, both Instructor-lead and Internet-based, covering both technical and business skills.

The QA Case Study 3 explains the company's approach to using TOGAF, and gives an example of a recent client engagement in the Travel industry using TOGAF.

Statskonsult (Norway)

Statskonsult is the Department of IT Planning & Co-ordination, in the Directorate for Public Management, within the Norwegian Government. It used parts of the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) to develop an architecture for an IT infrastructure for the public sector in Norway.

The Case Study explains the general background to the project. The use of the TOGAF ADM is explained in a separate presentation. 4

Norway Streamlines Government Processes by Going Online

In Norway, over 35% of the population are experienced in navigating the Internet. The Norwegian government intends to leverage this knowledge by using the Internet to deliver more effective and cost-efficient public administration services. Termed the Public Sector Network, this initiative is a joint venture between Norway's Ministry of National Planning and Co-ordination and the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. The objective is to create a national Internet-based infrastructure that will enable the public administration (both local and central government) to transform from a traditional paper-based, bureaucratic organization into an easily-approached, responsive online body. Initially, over 100 paper-based reporting mechanisms between public bodies are being targeted for conversion to online systems. The aim is to convert every applicable service by 2001.

Through the Public Sector Network, the Norwegian people will be able to manage their relationship with the public administration in the fields of taxation, welfare, and other public administration functions. As a result, the Norwegian government will deliver improved service levels and significantly reduce its costs on currently labor-intensive, paper-based tasks. Consequent savings can then be allocated to furthering the public good in areas such as health care and education.

Working with The Open Group to Plan the Future

In helping to establish the Public Sector Network, an ongoing relationship has been established between the Norwegian Ministry of National Planning and Co-ordination and The Open Group.

The Open Group will serve as a central resource that tests, brands, and guarantees compatibility with IT DialTone specifications, products, and technologies. In this capacity, The Open Group will contribute substantially to the Norwegian Public Sector Network and similar projects around the globe.

An Internet DialTone Framework as Easy-to-Use as the Telephone

Creating a national infrastructure such as the Public Sector Network poses a number of challenges. There are currently many point-solutions, technologies, and products from a growing number of suppliers. But how do companies wishing to utilize the Internet understand the benefits and risks associated with each one? Which ones work with each other, conform to agreed standards, or will remain relevant in five years' time? How do companies avoid making proprietary decisions that could erode the required benefits of the Internet?

"The more common approach to this project would have been to build one big government network that is planned, constructed, and managed centrally. However, this approach is not very flexible and would almost certainly have required the costly duplication or replacement of existing infrastructure - in fact it would probably have failed. It's really a challenge to match the formal, juridical framework with the needs of the marketplace, especially under the European Union rules for public procurement," says Gard Titlestad, Head of the Secretariat for IT Standardisation.

"The alternative is to adopt a more "open" approach that protects the vast investment of public money in existing infrastructure and enables the ongoing integration of new technology from a broad range of suppliers. To do this we identified the need for a common framework - an industry-agreed reference point by which to identify standards, products, and technologies that provide consistent features and attributes, such as security and reliability - now and in the future. A solution is to work closely with The Open Group to assist in the delivery of its IT DialTone architecture."

To ensure that the Public Sector Network remains flexible and maximizes the use of the latest market developments in technology and service, the project is based on a framework agreement. The IT DialTone set of technologies provides the framework with a reference point and an agreed approach to the development and implementation of Internet standard specifications, technologies, and products. In turn, this framework guides the procurement policies of each municipality and government department, guaranteeing a consistent approach to the network implementation. Yearly re-negotiation of the framework will consistently reflect market development dynamics.

Joseph De Feo, Former President & CEO of The Open Group said: "The Norwegian Government is leading Europe in the charge to realize the true social potential of the Internet. As part of this process they have identified the benefits of basing their future infrastructure development on robust, industry-agreed standards not on proprietary solutions, which they realize could eventually erode the country's ability to communicate freely with the world if alternative, non-compatible decisions are made by other governments, companies, or organizations."

With the Public Sector Network, Norway leads the world in creating a national, Internet-based infrastructure to administer public services and improve government operational efficiency. The country's proactive steps guarantee the construction of an effective, supplier-independent, and flexible national online resource.

Westpac (Australia)

Westpac is a major Australian bank who have used TOGAF in collaboration with IBM, in much the same way as the UK Department of Social Security; i.e., as the basis of managing the technology components of a major outsourcing relationship.

The Westpac Case Study 5 gives an overview of the approach used and reactions.

return to top of page

The TOGAF document set is designed for use with frames. To navigate around the document:

  • In the main Contents frame at the top of the page, click the relevant hyperlink (Part I, Part II, etc.) to load the Contents List for that Part of the TOGAF document into the Secondary Index frame in the left margin.
  • Then click in that Contents List to load a page into this main frame.

Downloads of the TOGAF documentation, are available under license from the TOGAF information web site . The license is free to any organization wishing to use TOGAF entirely for internal purposes (for example, to develop an information system architecture for use within that organization). A hardcopy book is also available from The Open Group Bookstore as document G063 .

  • CHINA VOICES
  • BELT AND ROAD
  • INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES
  • INFOGRAPHICS
  • WHITE PAPERS
  • CHINA FACTS

China Daily | February 19, 2024

Foreign Minister Wang Yi gives the keynote speech on Saturday during the "China in the World" session at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. REN PENGFEI / XINHUA

Foreign Minister Wang Yi's wide-ranging policy speech at the 60th Munich Security Conference highlighted China's role as a "stabilizing force", which demonstrates the consistency and credibility of the country's foreign policy, analysts said.

Amid escalating geopolitical conflicts and sluggish world economic recovery, China's latest diplomatic efforts and policy statements help shore up expectations for upholding multilateralism, revitalizing China-European Union cooperation, and averting a return to the Cold War mentality, according to observers.

In his speech on Saturday at the conference's "China in the World" session, Wang focused on advancing cooperation with major countries and economies as well as the vast number of Global South nations, and he addressed hot spot issues such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In addition, he warned against the fallout and backfiring that would be brought about by disengaging from China or seeking economic decoupling.

When highlighting "the urgent need of coordination among major countries to deal with turbulence in the world", Wang named the United States, Russia and the European Union.

On relations with the US, Wang said Beijing will firmly guard its legitimate rights and interests, oppose unreasonable suppression, work with Washington to carry out the consensus of the two heads of state, and advance the nations' relations along the right track.

The stable growth of China-Russia ties serves the common interest of both sides and "has a positive impact on the strategic stability of the Asia-Pacific and the globe", he said.

Regarding ties with the EU, Wang said the two sides "should rule out geopolitical and ideological disturbance and continue defining one another as partners rather than rivals".

When talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Wang said China calls for a faster pace in establishing an independent State of Palestine, and he emphasized the need to convene a larger and more effective international peace conference. He also underlined Beijing's consistent support for peace talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

From Friday through the weekend, Wang also embarked on bilateral talks on the sidelines of the conference, including meetings with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the foreign ministers of France, Argentina, Canada, Poland, Mongolia and Ukraine.

Scholz told Wang that Berlin stands against protectionism and decoupling, and is ready to work with Beijing to play a positive role in safeguarding peace.

After his one-on-one meeting with Wang on Saturday, Josep Borrell, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said on social media that China "is an important partner to address the most pressing security challenges".

Cui Hongjian, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University's Academy of Regional and Global Governance, noted that this year's Munich conference has seen its agenda dominated by topics such as "de-risking", supply and production chains and scrutiny of foreign investment, and some Western countries are still advancing their plans to "de-risk" with regard to China.

"As Chinese officials and scholars take part in the discussions, they can help Europe better grasp its role in economic cooperation and better understand where the real risks come from," Cui said.

China remains committed to economic globalization and development through multilateral cooperation initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, he added. "The West should also truly return to the path of seeking development through cooperation."

In his speech, Wang also said that China remains committed to greater opening-up to the rest of the world and offering more convenience to foreigners coming to the country for business, travel or education.

China will shorten the "negative list" for foreign investment and provide a more market-oriented, rule-of-law and internationalized business environment for enterprises from all over the world, including those from Europe, he added.

It would be a "historic mistake" to disengage from China in the name of "de-risking", Wang said, adding that "there is no possibility of reversing the general trend of economic globalization", and countries should make globalization more inclusive and beneficial for all.

China "sticks to providing more public goods to the world within its capacity", works earnestly to boost unity and collaboration among the developing Global South, and looks to further boost the influence of developing countries in global affairs, he said.

Liu Zuokui, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies, said various parties should fully respect one other's security concerns, especially those of developing countries, and work to shape and improve a just and reasonable international order.

social security case study

  • Free Case Studies
  • Business Essays

Write My Case Study

Buy Case Study

Case Study Help

  • Case Study For Sale
  • Case Study Service
  • Hire Writer

Case Study on Social Security

Social security case study:.

Social security is the system of efforts, policies and strategies which are conducted by the government and various organizations aimed at the maintenance of life, activity and development of the human being. Social security is probably the most important function of the country, because the basic human need is the need of security, peace and guarantee of the stable and secure life.The government of every country creates its own variants of solutions and decisions which would be useful for the facilitation of peace and security in the society. The system of social security is quite varied and one can define such spheres as: affordable healthcare, affordable education, social insurance, pension, the system of social services, charity, private aid, etc.

The main task of the government is to help the citizens of its country to survive and maintain their development and improvement of the level of life. It is obvious that the government has to help people with the unfavourable financial background whose income is too little for the normal life.Such people are provided with the federal or state financial aid aimed at the intensive improvement of the level of their life. The government has the duty to pay attention to every category of citizens, their condition and the level of their life. In many countries the government donates much money from the state budget to make education and health service free for everyone but it is obvious that the quality of such services can not be of the right quality.

We Will Write a Custom Case Study Specifically For You For Only $13.90/page!

The issue of social security is quite interesting for the research and the student is able to observe different approaches towards this problem in different countries and political systems. The student can observe the problem in general and learn about different sides of social security in order to be able to analyze the definite issue suggested for the case study. The student’s duty is to find out about the cause of the need of the social security system in the selected state, focus on its functions and types and then observe the effect of the system on the life of the society and the quality of its life.The student is able to cope with the case study successfully if he takes advantage of a free example case study on social security in India analyzed and constructed by the experienced writer in the Internet. The young person has the chance to prepare a quality assignment on time just looking through a free sample case study on comparing social security benefits which can be found online.

Everyone can use these free assignments for the self-development as a model of the successful land professional writing.

Related posts:

  • Social Networking Security
  • Social Security Privatization
  • Case Study on Social Constructivism
  • Case Study on Social Audit
  • Case Study on Social Marketing
  • Case study Security Officer
  • Case Study on Network Security

' src=

Quick Links

Privacy Policy

Terms and Conditions

Testimonials

Our Services

Case Study Writing Service

Case Studies For Sale

Our Company

Welcome to the world of case studies that can bring you high grades! Here, at ACaseStudy.com, we deliver professionally written papers, and the best grades for you from your professors are guaranteed!

[email protected] 804-506-0782 350 5th Ave, New York, NY 10118, USA

Acasestudy.com © 2007-2019 All rights reserved.

social security case study

Hi! I'm Anna

Would you like to get a custom case study? How about receiving a customized one?

Haven't Found The Case Study You Want?

For Only $13.90/page

Case Study Hub | Samples, Examples and Writing Tips

Case study on social security, social security case study:.

Social security is the system of efforts, policies and strategies which are conducted by the government and various organizations aimed at the maintenance of life, activity and development of the human being. Social security is probably the most important function of the country, because the basic human need is the need of security, peace and guarantee of the stable and secure life.

The government of every country creates its own variants of solutions and decisions which would be useful for the facilitation of peace and security in the society. The system of social security is quite varied and one can define such spheres as: affordable healthcare, affordable education, social insurance, pension, the system of social services, charity, private aid, etc.

We can write a Custom Case Study on Social Security for you!

The main task of the government is to help the citizens of its country to survive and maintain their development and improvement of the level of life. It is obvious that the government has to help people with the unfavourable financial background whose income is too little for the normal life.

Such people are provided with the federal or state financial aid aimed at the intensive improvement of the level of their life. The government has the duty to pay attention to every category of citizens, their condition and the level of their life. In many countries the government donates much money from the state budget to make education and health service free for everyone but it is obvious that the quality of such services can not be of the right quality.

The issue of social security is quite interesting for the research and the student is able to observe different approaches towards this problem in different countries and political systems. The student can observe the problem in general and learn about different sides of social security in order to be able to analyze the definite issue suggested for the case study. The student’s duty is to find out about the cause of the need of the social security system in the selected state, focus on its functions and types and then observe the effect of the system on the life of the society and the quality of its life.

The student is able to cope with the case study successfully if he takes advantage of a free example case study on social security in India analyzed and constructed by the experienced writer in the Internet. The young person has the chance to prepare a quality assignment on time just looking through a free sample case study on comparing social security benefits which can be found online. Everyone can use these free assignments for the self-development as a model of the successful land professional writing.

At EssayLib.com writing service you can get a custom case study on Social Security topics. Your case study will be written from scratch. We hire top-rated Ph.D. and Master’s writers only to provide students with professional case study help at affordable rates. Each customer will get a non-plagiarized paper with timely delivery. Just visit our website and fill in the order form with all paper details:

Custom Case Study on Social Security

Related Posts:

  • Health Management: Business Case Study
  • Case Study – Zara International: Fashion at…
  • Apple Inc Case Study Sample
  • Case Study on Zappos – How They Did It
  • Case Study – Amazon: One E-Store to Rule Them All

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

IMAGES

  1. 37+ Case Study Templates

    social security case study

  2. case study template social work

    social security case study

  3. Free Social Network Security Case Study Sample

    social security case study

  4. (PDF) SOCIAL SECURITY

    social security case study

  5. Things You Can Do to Help Your Social Security Case

    social security case study

  6. Social Work

    social security case study

COMMENTS

  1. Social Security Isn't Going Bankrupt—Here's Why

    Yet in a tweet on their write-up of the report, the New York Times began "Social Security will be depleted in 2033…". Social Security will not be depleted in 2033—the OASI Trust Fund would ...

  2. We Can Reform Social Security Without Hurting Those Who Need It ...

    Professor Nathasha Sarin of Yale Law School, writing in the Washington Post, makes the case for Social Security reform that is entirely based upon tax increases, preferably focused on high-income ...

  3. The Future of Social Security

    Program. Social Security has been a huge success. It provides benefits to 44 million Americans who are elderly, disabled or survivors of deceased workers. More than three-fifths of the elderly ...

  4. Court Case Decisions

    Cleveland, Carolyn C. v. Policy Management Systems Corporation et.al. (disability insurance benefits -- claims filed under both the Social Security Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act), SSR 00-1c. Cobb v. Secretary of HHS (disability, suspension of benefits for inmates of penal institutions, constitutionality), 83-28c.

  5. Social Security Works for the United States 2019

    Social Security Works is a nongovernmental organization that works to protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; ... Journal of Disability Policy Studies. Jun 2020. Restricted access. Social Security Reform: Start With the Facts. Show details Hide details. Martha Priddy Patterson. Compensation & Benefits ...

  6. Case Study #10: The Exclusion of Social Security Retirement Benefits

    Download (PDF) Fiscal Fact No. 388: Case Study #10: The Exclusion of Social Security Retirement Benefits from Taxable Income. These results are part of an eleven-part series, The Economics of the Blank Slate, created to discuss the economic effects of repealing various individual taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or ...

  7. Research, Statistics & Policy Analysis

    Annual Statistical Supplement, 2023 (complete) The Annual Statistical Supplement, 2023 is now available in HTML, PDF, and XLSX formats. Social Security Bulletin. SSA's quarterly research journal, covering Social Security-related topics of broad interest. Social Security Administration Research, Statistics, and Policy Analysis.

  8. Which Social Security Claiming Strategy Generates the Highest Legacy

    Though it is reasonable to expect that delaying Social Security may give up some of the upside po-tential if financial markets perform extremely well in retirement, which is the argument sometimes made in favor of claiming early, this figure highlights the low odds for achieving a better outcome for this case study when using a 50 percent stock ...

  9. Understanding Social Security Development: Lessons From the Chinese Case

    comparison of the social security of various OECD coun-tries by function. Meanwhile, study items of this scope vary along regions and countries. For instance, scholars like Feldstein (2018) have highlighted the ongoing exhaustion of the social security fund in America. Studies on Eastern Europe have observed

  10. Case Studies from the Benefit Offset National Demonstration

    Case Studies from the Benefit Offset National Demonstration. Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries who return to work and earn above a substantial gainful activity level can lose their cash benefits, which is often considered a disincentive to employment. The Benefit Offset National Demonstration ( BOND) project tests a policy that ...

  11. How Social Security Spousal Benefits Really Work: A Case Study

    For a spousal benefit, her calculated benefit is 50% x $2,600 = $1,300. In this situation, she'll only receive her own benefit. Her wages were high enough to create a Social Security benefit ...

  12. Understanding Social Security Development: Lessons From the Chinese

    In this respect, impersonal factors like GDP per capita and demographic profile can be quantitatively valued depending on the application of certain standards to each country to illustrate their social security development. These studies form part of the convergence school, as their independent variables are universal.

  13. Knowledge management: A U.S. Social Security Administration case study

    Case study: US Social Security Administration3.1. OverviewThe SSA developed out of the 1935 Social Security Act passed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Essentially, SSA administers social insurance at the national level—retirement, survivors, and disability (SSA, 2000a). SSA's primary goal for 2000 was improved customer service ...

  14. Social Security is badly out of balance, per expert—3 potential

    Social Security is badly out of balance, per expert—3 potential solutions. February 1, 2024. Body. Charles Blahous details some of the challenges facing the Social Security Administration and how to deal with them.

  15. The 12 Biggest Threats Social Security Faces In 2024

    The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program faces its own set of financial pressures, with increasing claims and the need for careful management to ensure sustainability. Shutterstock ...

  16. Retirement Daily Learning Center: Social Security Case Studies

    Martha Shedden, the president and founder of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts, discusses a number of Social Security case studies for single, married, divorced and ...

  17. Social security for the excluded majority: Case studies of developing

    Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, USA, March 2001. The large majority of workers in developing countries are excluded from social security protection. This book examines this problem in Benin, China, El Salvador, India and the United Republic of Tanzania, and explores ways in which governments and organizations at national and local ...

  18. SSA Case Study

    INTRODUCTION. This case study has been produced to help others understand how the strategic planning process at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has evolved over the last 20 years, how our current process works, and what we will be doing in the near future to refine the process. The case study is structured to illustrate the iterative ...

  19. Social Security Case Studies: What's at Stake for Single, Married

    Get the full Social Security Case Studies CPE course. EARN CPE. A comprehensive Social Security analysis and further retirement planning requires that clients estimate their life expectancy. This is not a topic most people want to think about or discuss! I recommend they use the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator at www.livingto100.com in ...

  20. Misconceptions on Social Security Benefits

    If you have questions on how Social Security benefits fit into your retirement plan, the experts at Henssler Financial will be glad to help: Experts Request Form. Email: [email protected]. Phone: 770-429-9166. This article is for demonstrative and academic purposes and is meant to provide valuable background information on particular ...

  21. Social Security benefits quiz: 41% of near retirees failed it

    When put to the test with a 13 question true/false Social Security quiz, 78% of respondents ages 55 to 65 failed or barely passed. That includes 41% who failed and 37% who got a D.

  22. Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2023

    Fast Facts & Figures answers the most frequently asked questions about the programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA).It highlights basic program data for the Social Security (retirement, survivors, and disability) and Supplemental Security Income programs.

  23. Case Studies

    Social Security spending is approaching £100 billion a year (1999), making it the biggest single spending department in government. At any given time, 70% of the population are in contact with the DSS. ... The QA Case Study 3 explains the company's approach to using TOGAF, and gives an example of a recent client engagement in the Travel ...

  24. Water

    Economic values have dominated water policy discourse over the last four decades. Very little has been written on social, cultural, and ecological values and their roles in enhancing water security. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of diverse water values with a case study of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, India. To achieve this, a review of ...

  25. China vows to serve as world's stabilizing force

    Liu Zuokui, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies, said various parties should fully respect one other's security concerns, especially those of developing countries, and work to shape and improve a just and reasonable international order.

  26. Case Study on Social Security

    Social Security Case Study: Social security is the system of efforts, policies and strategies which are conducted by the government and various organizations aimed at the maintenance of life, activity and development of the human being. Social security is probably the most important function of the country, because the basic human need is the need of security, peace and guarantee of the stable ...

  27. DOC Case Study: Referendum

    Resource 7: Case Study on Coverage Eligibility This case study explores a Social Security coverage situation that could easily occur on any day in the life of a state social security administrator. The fictitious scenario begins when a state administrator is notified about the creation of a new political subdivision. Reading the case study will ...

  28. Case Study on Social Security

    Social Security Case Study: Social security is the system of efforts, policies and strategies which are conducted by the government and various organizations aimed at the maintenance of life, activity and development of the human being. Social security is probably the most important function of the country, because the basic human need is the need of security, peace and guarantee of the stable ...