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Could investing in the stock market right the Social Security ship?
A new report from the Center for Retirement Research ran the numbers. Spoiler alert: Probably not.
Social Security’s reserves are on track to hit a critical tipping point in roughly seven years. At that point, if no adjustments are made, the entitlement program’s trust fund will be able to pay out just 77% of benefits to seniors.
Lawmakers have floated a range of fixes, including raising payroll taxes, increasing the retirement age for younger workers, and lifting the cap on earnings subject to Social Security taxes, currently $184,500 in 2026.
The new study examines a more unconventional proposal by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine — to have the Social Security Administration borrow heavily and invest the leveraged funds in the stock market.
“It’s a gamble that does not always pay off,” according to the researchers.
The proposal would create an investment fund financed with $1.5 trillion in borrowed funds that would then be invested in equities. Over 75 years, the government would borrow an additional $25.1 trillion to cover benefit gaps, bringing total borrowing to $26.6 trillion.
The appeal is straightforward: Stocks historically generate higher returns than the Treasury securities currently held by the Social Security trust fund. Those higher returns could, in theory, reduce the need for future tax hikes or benefit cuts.
The flip side, of course, is that stocks are a far riskier investment than government bonds, which are considered risk-free.
The study ran several simulations and found that even if stocks deliver a strong 6.5% real annual return over the next 75 years, the Cassidy-Kaine proposal would fully repay its borrowing only about 40% of the time.
Under less optimistic return assumptions, the outcome worsens considerably, leaving the government with large amounts of debt and hefty interest payments decades down the road.
The researchers say the strategy comes with still more risks, including market volatility, political interference, and the possibility that government ownership stakes could become large enough to affect market stability.
“It’s not that the stock market will not help,” Anqi Chen, senior research economist and co-author of the report, told Yahoo Finance. “It’s that borrowing to invest in the stock market will likely saddle future taxpayers with debt.”
Social Security watchdogs agree: “One concern regarding Senator Cassidy’s proposal is that the financial markets are unlikely to return the level of profits needed to pay back the loans needed to establish a special Social Security fund,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told Yahoo Finance.
