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Show Your Social I ecur ?; Replacement rate explained Copley News Service Q. What is meant by the :. "replai"aient rate" that ( hear mentioned by , liose discussing Social Se- curity? A.R. v A. The replacement rate ", is a comparison of the old- age Social Security benefit study at the time of retire-rnent retire-rnent to immediate pre-retirement earnings. A study for the period 1969 to 1980 reveals that the replace- ment rate for a single worker increased from 30 percent to 44 percent while ;s to aged couple realized a boost from 44 percent in "5 1969 to 66 percent in 19S0. r Q. Won't they soon run out of Social Security num- y, btrs with the present sys- i Km of issuing numbers? i RX ; : A. The present nine-digit i. number provides the ca- "; parity for assigning nearly " 1 billion Social Security :; numbers. To date only a J little over 25 percent of S those numbers have been used. About 5 to 7 million new numbers are issued each year, but even at this rate there will be sufficient numbers available for several sev-eral generations to come. Q. We hear many objections objec-tions to increased Social Security taxes as a means of alleviating the financial problems facing the system. sys-tem. How is the problem handled in other countries' B.T. A. It varies greatly. In other countries, the Social Security program is more comprehensive and includes welfare and unemployment un-employment benefits. In Sweden, for example, the employer may pay as much as 35 percent of payroll pay-roll into the system, while the employee makes no contributions. In the Netherlands, an employee pays about 26 percent of earnings while the employer contributes about 29 percent of payroll. Questions on Social Security Se-curity may be sent to Eugene Eu-gene Williams, Social Security Se-curity Office, P.O. Box 82727, San Diego, CA 92138. |