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Social Security: Providing Useful Information to the Public

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date April 11, 2000
Report No. T-HEHS-00-101
Subject
Summary:

The Social Security Administration's (SSA) individualized social security statement, which provides the public with basic information on their social security benefits, can be an important tool in personal financial planning. GAO recommended that SSA improve the layout and design of the statement it issued in 1996 and simplify its explanations. GAO also recommended that SSA explore alternative formats for the statement. On the basis of information it gathered from prototypes, focus groups, and a public opinion survey, SSA developed a new four-page statement for its fiscal year 2000 mailing that is much improved. The newly revised statement does a better job of providing basic information to individual workers. Adding the explanations necessary to fairly portray rates of return, however, would significantly increase the length of the statement and undermine efforts to simplify it, increasing the risk that recipients would neither read nor fully understand it.

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