October 31: Calculating Social Security

Robert Julius Myers, who calculated the actuarial realities of Social Security for the Roosevelt Administration before the program was inaugurated in 1935, was born on this date in 1912. Myers calculated age 67 to be the right retirement age for a self-sustaining program, but the legislation established the age at 65— “picked because 60 was too young and 70 was too old,” Mr. Myers wrote in a 1992 memoir. “So we split the difference.” Myers worked as Security’s chief actuary from 1947 to 1970. He was a liberal Republican and vehemently opposed both the expansion of the program and its proposed privatization. Myers died in 2010 at age 97.

“[T]he translation of the word ‘privatization’ is ‘destroyed.’ If it won’t do it immediately, it will do it inevitably.” —Robert J. Myers