February 18, 2005

Did the spinmeisters forget something? For years, they've been telling us about a horde of baby-boomers about to wreck havoc on the Social Security system. They've never actually said that these were births "above normal" caused by 16 million lusty servicemen and women returning from the theaters of World War II in 1945, but they certainly implied it. Seventy-six million births between 1946 and 1965, the normal child bearing ages of these veterans and their soulmates, sounds very dramatic doesn't it.

On Sunday, February 13th, the Gannet News Service published an article titled "Social Security Sales Pitch" that was splashed across the front page of the Opinion section of the Rockford Register Star in my hometown. It was accompanied by pictures of Bush stumping in five states for his Social Security plan.

This article also contained a graphic sidebar called "The president's individual resolve" which at the bottom featured the following Census data:

Pay particular attention to this graphic bar chart. It covers today's population by age, at the bottom, and millions for each year vertically. No bar goes up to five million people.

Anyone born in 1946 would be 59 years old today, and anyone born in 1965 would be 40 years old. Thus, the baby-boomers start at the second bar in the middle "grey" area and extend five bars into the right "light grey" area. Does this seem to be a dramatic thrust upwards to you?

Where are the baby-boomers? If there were 76 million births above normal, the middle section from 40 to 59 years of age would be off the chart.

As I've said time and again, there were probably seven to eight million births "above normal" between 1946 and 1965 once immigration is taken out, but certainly not anything Social Security couldn't handle without breaking a sweat. The idea that the baby-boomers are a serious problem is a myth, something meant only to scare you.

I still think Clinton missed the decimal point his speech writers had prepared for him when they wrote in 7.6 million baby-boomers. The sensationalist Fourth Estate took it from there.

You can play around with this chart and maybe you'll come away with some appreciation of the things actuaries and statisticians deal with. And believe me, the Social Security Administration in Baltimore has some of the best. So does any successful insurance company.

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