Tag: media coverage
The brief’s key findings are: Social Security’s trust fund is projected to deplete its reserves in 2034, after which ongoing revenues will cover only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits. News coverage tends to emphasize the depletion date over the ongoing tax revenues, often with alarming headlines. To gauge how such coverage could affect worker behavior,…
Abstract This study explores how workers respond to reports about Social Security’s finances, using an online experiment in which participants are shown identical articles with different headlines. The headline for the control group reports that Social Security has a “long-term financing shortfall,” but does not directly reference the trust fund. The headlines for the thr…
