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Income Security: Comments on the Social Security Notch Issue

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date July 23, 1992
Report No. T-HRD-92-46
Subject
Summary:

The Social Security "notch" refers to a perceived inequity in benefits for people born between 1917 and 1921, due to a change in benefit computation introduced in 1977 amendments to the Social Security Act. GAO testified that notch babies generally collect more benefits than most coming before or after them, and the perception that they receive less is based on a comparison with a group that got an unintended windfall from the system as a result of a flawed benefit formula. GAO believes that a "fix" is not warranted and that proposed legislation to address the notch issue should not be pursued.

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