ArcaMax

The people who syndicate this column have just assigned a new editor to me. She's a relatively young person. (Of course, when you are 76 years old, as I am, the majority of people I meet and deal with are younger than me!) I sort of apologized to my young editor for having to work with a guy who writes a column about an old people's topic like Social Security. But she graciously let me know she was looking forward to learning more about the program.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about the issue of young people and Social Security. And it turns out they are more involved with the program than most folks might think. And I'll use the rest of this column to explain.

I'll start out by sharing this story. For part of my career with the Social Security Administration, my job was to run around and give speeches and make presentations about the program to various groups and organizations. I used to go out of my way to schedule such talks to high school students -- usually as part of a history or economics class. You might think that I had some kind of speaker's death wish. After all, can you think of a tougher crowd to stand up in front of and talk about Social Security than a group of teenagers? But there was a method to my madness.

I'd start each class by asking the kids what they thought of when I said the words, "Social Security." Inevitably, someone would say "old people." And another kid might pop up and say, "Yeah, I think my grandparents get Social Security checks." And usually another student would say, "I think that's what they are taking out of my paycheck at McDonald's." Those were the kinds of responses I was expecting.

After a few minutes of playing that word association game, I'd turn the tables a bit and tell the class this. "Many years ago, when I was sitting where you are sitting, I was getting a Social Security check every month from the government." And then I'd ask them, "How come?"

There was always a long pause as the kids mulled this over. In fact, even the teacher usually looked puzzled. But eventually, a young person somewhere in the room would raise his or her hand and say, "Maybe one of your parents died?"

And that was the right answer. My dad died when I was a little kid. And soon after that, my mom and my sister and brothers and I started getting monthly survivor benefits. So when I was in high school, I was indeed getting a Social Security check every month from the government. (And in case you're wondering, I wasn't making a killing off the program. As I recall, my check was all of $22 per month. But of course, that was 60 years ago.)

By the way, I just said "eventually" some kid in the class would figure out that my dad had died. And that was always because that child also had a deceased parent and was getting Social Security survivor benefits just as I was many years earlier. In fact, I probably made a hundred such talks to high school classes during that part of my career, and I don't remember a single class that didn't have at least one kid who was collecting a monthly Social Security check off the record of a deceased parent.

That's a big part of the message I was delivering to the kids (and now, to you). Social Security isn't just about old people. There are many millions of younger people who get Social Security benefits every month. They might be children of a deceased parent. Or they might be children of someone getting Social Security retirement or disability benefits. And speaking of the latter, they also might be young or middle-aged adults getting Social Security disability benefits.

The point is that survivor benefits (around since 1940) and disability benefits (around since 1956) are a big part of the Social Security program that many people usually don't think about. How big? Let's look at some numbers.

There are 70 million people getting Social Security benefits. Of those, about 8 million are getting disability benefits and another 6 million are getting survivor benefits. In other words, almost 20% of the people getting Social Security benefits are not retirees -- the kind of "old people" normally associated with the Social Security program.

Let me break that down further to highlight the number of children getting Social Security. There are about 1 million children of disabled workers getting monthly dependent benefits, and 2 million children of a deceased parent who are getting monthly survivor benefits.

Further, there are another 723,000 children of retirees who are getting dependent benefits. In other words, we are talking about senior citizens (almost always men) who are getting Social Security retirement benefits who happen to have one or more minor children still living at home. (For obvious biological reasons, it would be rather rare for a woman in her 60s to still have a minor child.)

This has always been a controversial part of the program. I can tell from the emails I've gotten over the years that people don't mind kids getting benefits from a disabled or deceased parent. But for some reason, they have a problem with the children of retirees getting benefits. I'm guessing it's because they figure we are talking about some old goat who has married a much younger woman and fathered a child or two by her -- and now those kids are getting monthly Social Security checks. Of course, that is not always the case. But I think it's the perception most people have of male retirees with small children at home.

Although when it comes to benefits for "children," we are not necessarily always talking about a minor. Those monthly Social Security checks to kids usually end when the child turns 18. But the law has always said that a child can get benefits after 18 if he or she is disabled. In other words, there are adults in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are getting "disabled adult child" benefits. That number is about 1 million. And that cuts across all three of the major benefit categories. In other words, of the 723,000 children of retirees and 1 million children of disabled workers and 2 million children getting survivor benefits, about 1 million of them are "disabled adult children."

Anyway, the whole point of this column is to point out that Social Security isn't always an old people's program.

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called "Social Security -- Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security." The other is "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts." You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. Or you can send him an email at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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