Social Security Jitters: Why Trust in This Bedrock of Retirement Is Shaky

In a Gallup poll conducted around the same time, 41 percent of U.S. adults said they doubted Social Security would be available in the next 10 years. That assumption is particularly pronounced among younger Americans, both surveys show.

What’s behind these worries? Sweeney notes that confidence in Social Security increases as Americans hit their 50s, as once-skeptical younger workers get closer to claiming their benefits. A 2025 AARP analysis found that those near or already in retirement show “the highest levels of confidence, likely reflecting their direct experience with the program.”

Mike Lynch, managing director of applied insights at Hartford Funds, says he sees the generational gap when he gives retirement presentations and brings up the future of Social Security — what he terms “the elephant in the room.”

Responses from audience members typically range from doubt to outright fear, depending on their age, Lynch says. Participants over 55 are a bit more confident, though they often express concern and confusion about Social Security’s finances and how it will work for them.

But “the younger folks are skeptical,” he adds. “[They’re] saying, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be here.’  ”

Older workers fear lower payments

The reality is that Social Security will continue to operate and make monthly payments as long as it keeps collecting payroll taxes from almost every American worker — although, as Porter notes, it faces a financial shortfall that could reduce those payments.

Cheryl Blackwell, a 67-year-old New Jersey resident who plans to apply for Social Security this year, says she doesn’t think Social Security will disappear in her lifetime, but she is worried about getting less than the full benefit she qualifies for, based on her lifetime earnings.

“That, I am afraid of,” says Blackwell, who spent years as an administrator in the nonprofit sector. “We have worked extremely hard” to sustain Social Security, she adds, with the promise that it would pay off in retirement.

Since retiring, she has taken seasonal part-time jobs with her local elections board and the U.S. Census Bureau to gain a layer of financial protection. And she implores her teenage nieces to start saving now, in case Social Security isn’t there, or pays significantly less, when they retire.

Jaimee Listokin, a 52-year-old Florida resident, is firmly in the skeptic camp when it comes to whether Social Security will be there for her when she reaches retirement age.

“Absolutely not,” she says.

Listokin is an actress but works several gig jobs to make ends meet, including personal trainer, brand ambassador and insurance representative. “What I wish for myself is that I would eventually be able to retire, but it’s highly unlikely,” she says. “Everything is so expensive.”

She sees how financially strapped her parents are, even with their Social Security and retirement savings, “so imagine how it would be for me.” She moved in with them about five years ago to help them out by paying rent.

Counting on Congress?

Steven Porter notes that amid an increase in political polarization, Congress in recent years has routinely failed at even its most basic task of passing annual spending bills, resulting in repeated government shutdowns.

“Nobody wants to talk to anybody,” he says. “It’s my party, my party, my party.” That has him “very concerned not only about Social Security but the general economy.”

His kids are even more pessimistic.

“Honestly, I don’t hold my breath for anything anymore,” says Katy Porter, who is 41. “Maybe I’m just jaded.”

Tischler, who supervises a sleep lab in Amherst, Ohio, shares the fear that her generation will get short shrift.

“There’s a lot of distrust with the government right now,” says Tischler, 42, a single mother who is trying to sock away money in her 401(k) and a college savings account for her teenage daughter. “I don’t really trust that they would solve it in the best way, especially for the middle class.”

Even if lawmakers do stabilize Social Security’s finances, she adds, the cost of living has risen so dramatically that by the time she retires, she doesn’t think the payments would make a difference for her financially. “I’m not counting on it,” she says.

Social Security is one of the few forms of retirement income with built-in inflation protection, thanks to annual cost-of-living adjustments tied to a key federal gauge of consumer prices. Still, many of those already retired are struggling to make ends meet amid rising costs. According to a December 2025 AARP poll, 7 percent of retirees had decided in the previous six months to go back to work, and nearly half cited the cost of living as the main motivation.

We’ve been here before

Nuñez attributes the fears about Social Security “going bankrupt” to confusion about a complex program and “sloppy language” circulating in today’s social media ecosystem. Some policymakers seeking to reshape or undermine Social Security have “leaned into that messaging,” he says.

Sweeney puts it more bluntly. There are “some very powerful, very rich people who have been trying for decades to get Congress to kill Social Security,” he says. “Their most effective weapon has been sowing fears that you won’t get the money you’ve earned.”

For example, in 2005, when he was promoting a plan to steer the payroll tax revenue that funds Social Security into private retirement accounts, President George W. Bush repeatedly warned that the program was “headed toward bankruptcy.”

Bush’s proposal was wildly unpopular and sank amid fierce opposition from AARP and other advocates. But that kind of rhetoric, repeated frequently over the years, has fueled public confusion and a misperception that Social Security was destined for the dustbin, says Eric Kingson, a professor emeritus at Syracuse University who has studied and advocated for the program for decades.

“It’s really been since the 1980s … that a very coordinated effort to undermine confidence in Social Security went into place,” he says.

That perception persists. When asked what would happen if the trust funds ran short, 39 percent of respondents in a 2026 AARP poll of U.S. adults said payments would stop. Only 23 percent correctly answered that payments would continue but at a lower level.

“Social Security will never go broke, as some have claimed,” Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer, said in a recent video on how the system is financed. “As long as there are workers and employers paying into the system, Social Security will always be here.”

As LeaMond says, legislative fixes are available. “This has actually happened before,” Nuñez points out.

In 1983, the last time the trust funds came close to running dry, Congress overhauled Social Security’s financial structure. That legislation, enacted with bipartisan support, gradually increased Social Security’s full retirement age (from 65 to 67), accelerated a planned payroll-tax rate hike, and levied federal taxes on some Social Security income, among other steps. It extended Social Security’s solvency for five decades.

If Congress were tackling the issue now with the same sense of urgency, that could help shore up confidence in Social Security, says Karthik Manickam, a research associate with the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, a think tank affiliated with the New School for Social Research in New York.

The relative lack of substantive public debate about a problem so near in the future reinforces the idea that Social Security’s collapse is “a fait accompli,” Manickam says. That need not be the case, he adds: “There are very real, very possible and very actionable policies that can be taken by Congress to ensure … that Social Security’s sufficiently funded.”

Sweeney notes that the 1983 agreement leaned heavily on reducing benefits to right Social Security’s financial ship, an outcome AARP will work to reverse this time around.

“The question was never whether [Congress] will act. It’s how they’ll act,” he says. “AARP will be fighting every step of the way to make sure they strengthen Social Security without cutting the money Americans have earned through decades of hard work.”