Founded in 1910, the NUL is the premier social service and civil rights organization in America. Headquartered in New York City, with an office strategically located in Washington, D.C., the League is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, community-based movement with 114 affiliates in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

The mission of the Urban League movement is to help African Americans attain social and economic equality. The fundamental objective of the NUL is to enable those who are striving toward the mainstream to achieve economic self-reliance and to enjoy their rights as equal citizens under the law.

In that context, we are extremely concerned about Social Security reform. This is a very important debate, affecting the lives of African American retirees, children and disabled workers. The line between poverty and meager subsistence depends on the outcome of this debate. Few issues could be more important when the gap between the rich and poor is widening.

The primary concerns of the NUL are that the program continues its transformation to becoming more family oriented and more family friendly. So, those who would emphasize only the annuity package, and change the focus of the program to individual workers and their personal, but not family, benefits are being radical.

Debating "Social Security" drops the program's formal name, Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance. "What is in a name?" Shakespeare asked. The current public debate is about the annuity portion of the program. Great debate. Interesting points. The problem is, the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program is about more than Old Age. For purposes of clarity, OASD Insurance, as its full name implies, is an insurance program. The tax collected to support the program comes from the Federal Insurance Contribution Act. It can best be described as a life insurance product, with disability and an annuity fully indexed to inflation, and to family size.

In debating the annuity portion of the program, much has been made about the "pay-as-you-go" nature of Social Security. Oddly, when the system began, planners had great concerns about inadequate growth in the economy, and a fear that the birthrate would not recover from its Depression era low-level, so a growing share of the population would be elderly.[1] Still, the decision was made to grant full retirement benefits to workers as they retired. This ignored that those workers had not participated in the Social Security system long enough to have created the savings justifying their benefits. Less is made about several changes that have taken place since then. Four major changes were the extension of family benefits for survivors, spouses and dependents in 1939, the addition of disability benefits in the 1950's, and then later lowering the age when workers could collect disability benefits, and granting early retirement in 1961. Those transformations created an insurance program, from an aid to the elderly program. To make the insurance system work, then, there is a delicate balance among those who will get benefits as retirees, as spouses of retirees, as widows or widowers, as dependent children, and as disabled workers. Changing one component of the system, therefore, has ramifications for that balance. So, balancing the retirement benefit cannot be done without affecting the other components of the program. Almost half the African Americans who receive benefits under the current program receive disability, dependent or survivors' benefits.

Elements of the progressive nature of the annuity can be duplicated, even if the program focus is shifted to the individual. But, a program that concentrates on the individual annuity will not easily maintain the current progressive nature of the program when it tries to protect divorced spouses, and children of retired workers.

The premise of the individual annuity debate is to emphasize increasing the individual's rate of return in receiving the annuity benefit. However, the benefits of the program are not just for the worker, but for the worker's dependents and spouse. That makes the program very complex, and difficult to assess, when viewed as only an annuity program for a worker. Of course individual returns can be easily raised at the expense of low-wage workers who seek early retirement from physically demanding jobs, the disabled, divorced and married spouses, and dependents who currently are insured because the Social Security system has a family focus.

For instance, from a family perspective, those in the African American community benefit disproportionately from the life insurance in OASDI - with children receiving support for the lost income when parents die too young, while white children benefit disproportionately from the annuity benefit - allowing their longer living parents to have a base of support and independence without needing intergenerational transfers. Because of the much higher mortality rates among African Americans in their late 20's and 30's, the annuity insurance appears to have a very low rate of return. Yet, the life insurance part of the program compensates for that difference.

Again, from a family perspective, the current system is extra progressive because low-income children tend to have low-income parents. Intergenerational transfers, from low-income children to support low-income parents, would put greater strains on wealth inequality among families. So, the progressive nature of the individual annuity, and disability insurance package are more progressive when examined from a family context.

The broad based support for the program comes from the many ways it touches the lives of American families. For some families, it is in the receipt of disability benefits. For some it is in the receipt of dependent survivor benefits. For some it is in the receipt of old age retirement benefits. For each family, a different need is met. A program which separated the treatment of retirement from the family insurance portion of the program would not have such a universal family focus.

The issues facing Social Security, face all Americans. The National Urban League hopes that solutions can consider all Americans. Americans who are disabled, Americans who are spouses of retired workers, Americans who are dependents of workers, and Americans who survive workers all need to be considered. We think Americans value most the safety net of Social Security. Changing the philosophy of the program, would remove the moral underpinnings that Americans value.