Public Opinion Toward Costs and Benefits of Social Security and Medicare

Abstract

Although most surveys show overwhelming support for old-age benefits among people of all ages, few surveys cover cost-benefit trade-offs in aging policy. Questions piloted by the American National Election Studies in 1991 surveyed attitudes not only about Social Security and Medicare expansion but also about taxes on Social Security benefits and the trade-off between increasing taxes and reducing elderly medical benefits. Path analysis is used to examine the influences on these benefit, tax, and cost-benefit trade-off items for elderly and nonelderly respondents. Attitudes toward taxes on Social Security benefits are shaped more by self-interest, and less by partisanship and ideology, than by attitudes toward benefits and cost-benefit trade-offs. Although there is some evidence of generational conflict, there is more conflict within generations than between them.