The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

One of the great advances of 20th century was increased life expectancy. This advance might have bankrupted Social Security, if it were not for women in the work force. When the Social Security program was created in the 1930s, life expectancy was 60 years, as compared to 75 years in the 1980s and 78 years today. With 1930s life expectancy, a great number of people were expected to pay Social Security taxes while they worked, but never live long enough to ever collect benefits. The early planners of the system understood that the prior contributions of the now-deceased were one way that a retiree could collect more in benefits than he paid in taxes.

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