Under a system that relies even partly on individual investment accounts, women would risk outliving the assets in their individual accounts. Social Security also provides important protections for divorced women-protections that are not addressed by most private individual investment account proposals. Like women, African Americans and Latinos are less likely to have resources other than Social Security when they retire, become disabled or die leaving dependent family members. These numbers would undoubtedly increase under a system of individual accounts. Most private individual account proposals raise the retirement age, something that would disproportionately harm African American men because they have shorter life expectancies than most Americans.
Individual accounts are uncertain.
Social Security provides benefits that are predictable and reliable. Privatization would replace all or part of these guaranteed benefits with individual investment accounts that are inherently uncertain. Market returns are not guaranteed-they fluctuate dramatically from individual to individual and from year to year. While the stock market has risen to new heights in recent years, economic history shows that this cannot go on forever. Eventually the market will drop.