82 The Future of Social Security By WILLIAM C. BIRDSALL and JOHN L. HANKINS William C. Birdsall received his doctorate in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1963. He then earned degrees in theology from Woodstock College, Maryland. Formerly an economist in the Social Security Administration in Washington, D. C., and visiting professor of economics at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, he has been on the faculty of the School of Social Work, University of Michigan, since 1973. John L. Hankins holds a master of social service from Bryn Mawr College and a master of arts in political science from the University of Michigan. He has worked for several years as a social worker in community mental health agencies. He is presently the director of the Office of Information Systems, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, University of Michigan. ABSTRACT: Social security has been the most, perhaps the only, popular social welfare program in the United States. Until recently it has steadily expanded in coverage, beneficiaries, and costs with little fanfare or notice. Since the mid-1970s that expansion has begun to threaten its financial soundness. Literal bankruptcy has become a short-run possibility as expenditures continually outrun receipts. Worse, in some respect, is the realistic possibility that the retirement costs of the baby-boom generation in the twenty-first century may be too great a burden for future workers to bear. How well social security has done, is doing, and is projected to do are analyzed in terms of the system’s twin goals of adequacy and individual equity. Options for change are severely limited by our stumbling economy and the high costs of a mature pension system. It is not likely that the traditional groups and alliances that played important roles in the expansion of social security will play predictable roles in its retrenchment.