Soc Sec XVIII: Social Security Advisory Board Technical Panel Report

Andrew Biggs notes that the Technical Panel of the SSAB (Social Security Advisory Board) has released its Report on Assumptions and Methods.

I am only a few pages into the 82 page Report but my initial response is that this is a very important deal. These people do seem to be actual independent observers fully willing to call them as the see them and seem to have identified a lot of the weaknesses in methodology that we here at AB see (for example that Low Cost has all variables moving in the same direction). Arne might be particularly interested in that they are proposing a duplication of something he is working on, which is to say a combination of Low Cost economic assumptions with Intermediate Cost demographics, I am sure he will want to compare notes.

I am going to take my own advice and actually read the thing before commenting, but I suspect this will be required reading for any serious commentary. BTW this Report only comes around every four years, and it looks like a substantial departure from the 2003. My reaction will come in comments a little later or tomorrow.