My Comments: My son recently suggested that he had doubts about there being any money left in the social security system for when he reaches retirement age. I simply shook my head.

Years ago, Congress was looking at something similar and made some changes. None of us as employees or employers were dramatically effected by any changes in our take home pay. But the system suddently gained another 40 years of viability.

Something similar will happen again. We are once again facing the same pressures. There are simply too many people who stand to lose if something isn’t done to make it viable again. It may then project to run out in 2080 but between here and then, there will be another adjustment. Either that or the aliens will be here and Will Smith too old to make a difference.

By Paula Aven Gladych

The growth of women in the workforce is placing downward pressure on the amount of pre-retirement income that Social Security replaces.

A study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College examined replacement rates for the average worker and determined that a more accurate measurement of replacement rates is needed to target couples because they operate as a unit.

What the center found is that the amount of pre-retirement income replaced by Social Security depends on the labor force activity of both spouses. At the high end, couples with a non-working spouse get the replacement rate from the worker’s benefit and from a spousal benefit, which could replace about 60 percent of the couple’s pre-retirement income.

At the low end, couples with two working spouses and identical earnings get the same replacement rate as an individual worker, which is about 40 percent. In the middle, couples see their replacement rate fall as the lower earner’s wages rise, to somewhere between 43 and 46 percent.

The report’s authors also discovered that as women go to work, replacement rates decline. They have dropped from 47 percent for those born early in the Depression to 42 percent for Early Boomers. By the time Generation X retires, replacement rates are projected to fall by an additional 5 percentage points.

The increase in full retirement age also has contributed to falling replacement rates because people are expected to reach age 67 before they can claim full Social Security benefits. So even if households work longer than in the past, they may fall increasingly short of qualifying for full benefits because the delay is not sufficient to keep pace with the increase in the full retirement age, the report found.

The drop in replacement rates is good news for the Social Security trust fund, but from a household standpoint, the drop in replacement rates for couples will lead to a declining role for Social Security. People are living longer but many are still retiring in their early 60s, which means that more workers will have to rely on other sources of retirement income, the report concluded.