Social Security Doesn't Tell Us Much

In the Jerit and Barabas piece, the authors investigate the link between "misleading rhetoric" among the political elite and popular adoption of incorrect factual conclusions. Specifically, they look at whether the language used to talk about Social Security changed people's evaluations of the future financial stability of the program. In their analysis, Jerit and Barabas make a few mistakes that throw their findings into question: they fail to correctly measure their dependent variable and they reverse the causal link in one of their key findings.

Jerit and Barabas ask a single question to guage the factual beliefs of their subjects. They ask them what will happen to Social Security if no changes are made within 20 years. They then offer four options for the subjects to choose: the program will completely run out of money (guaged as the most incorrect possible answer), the program will be able to pay less than half of the current benefits, the program will be able to pay about three-quarters of current benefit levels (the correct answer), and the program will continue to be able to meet current benefit levels. In order to guage the level of misinformation, Jerit and Barabas decided to measure how much people's answers to the above question differed from the correct answer. As a result, the people who thought that Social Security was not a pressing issue (those who said that Social Security would be able to pay current benefits for another 20 years) were guaged as more correct than those who correctly saw Social Security reform as an urgent public policy issue (those who said the program would either run out of money or be able to pay less than half of the current benefit level). This measurement schema implies that a statement saying that Social Security was in no danger whatsoever (supporting answer 4) is more correct than the statement that Social Security would go bankrupt (bankrupt understood in the technical sense of liabilities exceeding assets). Plainly, the latter statement is not substantially more misinformative than the former. As a result, Jerit and Barabas fail to capture even the kernal of truth in their "misleading rhetoric:" that Social Security is a program that is not financially stable in the long-term without substantial reform.

Furthermore, one of the conclusions the authors draw from their data is that stronger views on Social Security lead to more incorrect reponses to their question about the future of Social Security. It is, instead, the incorrect responses that lead to the stronger views. Of course someone is going to think that Social Security is a priority if they think it will completely run out of money within 20 years. The policy options that frame the formation of strong opinions on the issue are largely based on the popular factual misperceptions. In short, the factual belief comes before the policy position, as argued in the Gaines et al. article from last week. Jerit and Barabas wrongly reverse this causal link.