In his commentary this morning on Weekend Edition, NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr highlighted a fact that has been glossed over by the Bush Administration in its push for private accounts: one-third of Social Security beneficiaries are not retirees… and many of them are children.
Social Security is more than just an old-age pension fund, it is a family insurance program… the primary, if not only source of support preventing low income families from falling into poverty. Citing statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty, Schorr points out that Social Security is in fact the largest children’s program America has:
- One in 15 beneficiaries of Social Security is a child under 18