Future income and expenditures of the OASI and DI Trust Funds will depend on many factors, including the size and characteristics of the population receiving benefits, the level of monthly benefit amounts, the size of the workforce, and the level of covered workers’ earnings. These factors will depend in turn on future birth rates, death rates, immigration, marriage and divorce rates, retirement-age patterns, disability incidence and termination rates, employment rates, productivity gains, wage increases, inflation, interest rates, and many other demographic, economic, and program-specific factors.
The intermediate demographic and economic assumptions shown in table II.C1 reflect the Trustees’ best estimates of future experience, and therefore most of the figures in this overview depict only the outcomes under the intermediate assumptions. Any projection of the future is, of course, uncertain. For this reason, alternatives I (low-cost) and III (high-cost) are included to provide a range of possible future experience. The actual outcome for future costs is very unlikely to be as extreme as either of the outcomes portrayed by the low- and high-cost projections. The assumptions for these two alternatives are also shown in table
II.C1, and their implications are highlighted in a separate section,
beginning on page 15, on the uncertainty of the projections.
Assumptions are reexamined each year in light of recent experience and new information. This annual review helps to ensure that the assumptions provide the Trustees’ best estimate of future possibilities.
