Summary: Congress passed legislation in 1990 requiring the Social Security Administration (SSA) to begin providing the public with annual statements about its social security earnings records and estimates of the amount of benefits persons may receive. Starting in fiscal year 2000, SSA must mail personal earnings and benefit estimate statements to nearly every U.S. worker aged 25 and older--an estimated 123 million people. SSA projects that printing, mailing, and personnel costs associated with this effort will total nearly $77 million in fiscal year 2000 alone. Although SSA believes that it is prepared for the increased workload arising from this initiative, it has not assessed the added work likely to stem from questions about and corrections to the statements. SSA lacks reliable data on either the number of people who call or visit SSA with questions about their statements or the number of earnings corrections resulting from statement mailings. SSA could better manage the potential workload if it began to collect more complete and accurate data now on the effects of mailing the mandated statements.
