The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, draws attention to two long-standing social insurance programs that pay cash benefits to families when a breadwinner dies. Workers' compensation pays benefits if a worker is killed at work. Social Security pays families whether or not the worker's...

Workers' Compensation: Benefits, Coverage, and Costs, 2002 is the seventh in a series begun by the National Academy of Social Insurance to provide the only comprehensive national data on this largely state-run program. The study provides estimates of workers' compensation payments - cash and...

Reflections on Implementing Medicare, originally printed in the spring of 1993, provides a historical reflection on the early days of a program enacted in 1965 to provide health care coverage to 19 million elderly Americans. This second edition was released by the study panel on Medicare...

Workers' Compensation: Benefits, Coverage, and Costs, 2001 is the sixth in a series begun by the National Academy of Social Insurance to provide the only comprehensive national data on this largely state-run program. The study provides estimates of workers' compensation payments - cash and...

Social Security pays monthly benefits to retired and disabled workers, to their families, and to the families of deceased workers. Benefits and the administrative costs of the program are paid from the Social Security trust funds. The funds receive income from Social Security taxes paid by...

Life annuities are products sold by insurance companies to protect retirees against the risk of outliving their money. A life annuity is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase with lifelong consequences. Requiring retirees to buy life annuities with their individual accounts has advantages and...

This brief is one component of a toolkit of materials designed to educate workers approaching retirement about their options for taking Social Security benefits, and about why - if you can - it pays to wait. The brief is available for download here. The rest of the toolkit - a 3-minute video, a...

Currently, 8.8 million disabled workers (and nearly 2 million of their children) receive Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) benefits. For many, DI benefits are nearly all the income they have. The DI trust fund reserves are projected to be depleted in 2016, after which tax revenues coming...