Panel Proposes No Remedy for Social Security ‘Notch’

Congress should take no action on behalf of the “notch” generation, several million elderly Americans who believe that they are being cheated out of their fair share of Social Security benefits, a bipartisan commission recommended Thursday.

Congress created the 12-member commission in 1992 to investigate claims that Americans born between 1917 and 1921, the so-called notch years, were being treated unfairly.

The panel said benefits paid to those in the notch generation--about 6 million Americans now between ages 73 and 77--are equitable and that no changes are needed.

“To the extent that disparities in benefit levels do exist, they exist not because those born in the ‘notch’ years received less than their due; they exist because those born before the ‘notch’ years . . . continue to receive substantially inflated benefits,” the commission said. “This disparity has created an understandable perception of unfairness.”

The notch refers to a dip in a graph representing retirement benefits to seniors born between 1917 and 1921.

The notch has its origins in the 1970s, when Congress changed the way it calculated Social Security benefit levels. Lawmakers made a flawed decision that allowed people born between 1910 and 1916, just before the notch, to collect unduly large benefits.

The commission confirmed that many in the notch years receive lower benefits than many of those born a few years earlier or later.

For many notch retirees, the statistics are bolstered by personal knowledge of large inconsistencies between their benefits and those reported by friends, neighbors and relatives with similar wage histories, the commission said.

The commission also recommended against reducing benefits for recipients now between the ages of 78 and 84, those born before the notch.