Young Workers Doubt Future of Social Security

By John Ydstie

Published January 26, 2005 at 10:00 PM MST

St. Louis area residents Ben Kaplan, a designer and musician, and Julie Scheu, a furniture designer, acknowledge that they'll be affected by a higher retirement age.

President Bush has been urging action to fix what he calls a looming crisis in funding for the Social Security program. Young people have heard warnings about the system for decades.

In the third part of his series on how people of different generations look at Social Security, NPR's John Ydstie finds that younger workers are highly skeptical they'll get their promised benefits.

John Ydstie

John Ydstie has covered the economy, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve at NPR for nearly three decades. Over the years, NPR has also employed Ydstie's reporting skills to cover major stories like the aftermath of Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He was a lead reporter in NPR's coverage of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, as well as the network's coverage of President Trump's economic policies. Ydstie has also been a guest host on the NPR news programs Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Ydstie stepped back from full-time reporting in late 2018, but plans to continue to contribute to NPR through part-time assignments and work on special projects.

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