Economist To Present Plan for Fixing Social Security

A former chair of the Advisory Council to the U.S. Social Security Administration will give a free public lecture on Tuesday, April 29, at 4 p.m. at UW–Madison.

Edward Gramlich, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, will speak at the State Historical Society, 816 State Street. The title of his speech is “Where Will Social Security be in the Next Century?”

Gramlich headed the council when it made a report in January 1997 that called for three approaches to fixing the Social Security System. Those three approaches were characterized as the “maintain benefits” plan, the “personal security accounts” plan and the “individual account” plan.

Gramlich championed the third approach, calling it a plan “that would preserve all essential protections of Social Security, give people investment choices (but constrained in such a way that people couldn’t misinvest), and provide people with badly needed new savings for their retirement on top of Social Security.”

Gramlich said his plan “nicely compromises liberals’ goal of retaining the important protections of Social Security and conservatives’ goal of introducing more individual choice and responsibility to retirement saving, as well as more pre-funding of future retirement need.”

Gramlich’s visit is sponsored by several departments, including the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, the Economics Department, the School of Human Ecology, the Institute for Research on Poverty and the School of Business.