On April 10, President Obama introduced his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2014, which includes a controversial change in how the Social Security program determines benefits for seniors. In short, the President wants the program to determine cost of living adjustments based on a "chained" Consumer Price Index (CPI), rather than a traditional CPI.
The chained CPI assumes that people can easily substitute cheaper goods for households necessities. However, SCEPA Director and retirement expert Teresa Ghilarducci joins the PBS Newshour blog, "Does Obama Have it Right or Wrong on Social Security?," to argue that seniors face the opposite as they age, as more and more of their income is taken up by expensive healthcare services and other products that do not have cheaper substitutes. It is also increasingly difficult for the elderly, especially those with health problems or disabilities, to buy in bulk or go from store to store bargain shopping. This fact is well-documented and led the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to develop a measure of inflation that reflects the true costs of aging: the Current Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E).
The differences between the chained CPI and the traditional CPI are only .03% lower per year. However, these small cuts year after year would mean that the average retiree would lose $1,147 a year by age 85. The cumulative cuts to people on Social Security reach $28,000 by the time a retiree is 95 according to Social Security advocates. In contrast, linking Social Security benefits to CPI-E would raise benefits by 6% for a 95-year-old rather than cut them by tens of thousands of dollars.