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Seventy-four percent of Americans surveyed just after the Nov. 3 presidential election said Social Security would have to face an immediate crisis — the trust becoming insolvent, for example — for Congress to try to fix the program.
Respondents age 35 to 44 and those 65 and older were particularly pessimistic, with 79% in each group agreeing that Social Security would need to be in crisis before Congress intervened.
The Harris Poll conducted the online poll on behalf of PlanGap from Nov. 5 to Nov. 9 among 2,050 U.S. adults.
Fifty-one percent of survey participants said they did not believe Congress wanted to fix Social Security, an outlook especially prevalent among those 55 to 64 who are nearing retirement age.
"By an overwhelming majority, Americans agree that the single most important source of retirement income for millions of their fellow citizens will basically have to be insolvent before an effort is made to solve this inevitable problem," PlanGap's founder and chief executive David Duley said in a statement.
