A common complaint I hear from my generation about social security is that “none of us will ever see a dime of it.” It occurs to me that this isn’t at all true. Some members of my generation have, in fact, already received social security, and members of the generation(s) behind me are already receiving benefits too.

I am one of those beneficiaries: my father died when I was fifteen and I received social security survivors’ benefits until the month before I turned eighteen. (The assertion that survivors’ benefits continue until age 22 if a non-disabled dependent is still in school only applies to secondary schools, not post-secondary schools. Believe me: I fought this one hard.) This partial replacement for my father’s income meant the difference between survival* and poverty for my family because he had been the main wage earner.

According to statistics for November 2003 (the last month for which they are available), 1,902,000 children under age 18 received social security survivors’ benefits that month. Another 189,000 beneficiaries were widowed parents, and given that Generation X is approaching or past the age of thirty now, this definitely means some of the parents fall into our generation. 1,562,000 children of permanently disabled workers also received benefits — and anyone who thinks it’s easy to qualify for SSDI ought to try it.

So the next time you take a look at that OASDI (6.2% of FICA) withholding, you might want to think about the fact that some of the people getting the money aren’t retirees, and many people who are no longer receiving benefits did at some point in their lives. I have never once complained about FICA withholding and I never will, because I know from experience how very beneficial the programs really are.

For the record, I do think retirement benefits will still be around in forty years, although there’s no way they’ll be the same as they are today. The Congress and administration that actually allows the fund to run out of money will effectively commit political suicide. What politician is willing to do that?

Also for the record, social security was never intended to be a full-fledged retirement savings program anyway. Even when President Roosevelt established it, it was meant as a safety net only. So I’m not at all saying that people shouldn’t save. It has always been assumed that they would. What happens, though, when your savings get eaten up in medical bills because a person hits their lifetime maximum for health insurance (which happened to my father)? Or when a parent dies before he or she has had the chance to work long enough to save any appreciable amount? There are lots of legitimate needs for a safety net.

* By “survival” I most certainly do not mean that my family lived the lifestyle we had before my father’s death. Even though he had life insurance, there was an extremely significant drop in standard of living. It just didn’t drop to the poverty level.