2026 OASDI Trustees Report

 

C. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE

The future income and cost of the OASI and DI Trust Funds will depend on many factors, including the size and characteristics of the population receiving benefits, the level of monthly benefit amounts, the size of the workforce, and the level of covered workers’ earnings. These factors will depend in turn on future birth rates, death rates, immigration, marriage and divorce rates, retirement patterns, disabled-worker incidence and termination rates, employment rates, productivity gains, wage increases, inflation, interest rates, and many other demographic, economic, and program-specific factors.

The Trustees set key demographic, economic, and programmatic assumptions for three alternative scenarios: intermediate, low-cost, and high-cost.

Most results presented in this overview indicate outcomes under the intermediate assumptions, which reflect the Trustees’ best estimates of future experience. Because any projection of the future is uncertain, results in the report are also presented under low-cost and high-cost alternatives to provide a range of possible future outcomes. Actual future cost is unlikely to be as extreme as portrayed by the low-cost and high-cost assumptions.¹

The Trustees reexamine the assumptions each year in light of recent experience and new information. This annual review helps to ensure that the Trustees’ assumptions provide the best estimate of future possibilities.

For each scenario, table II.C1 presents key demographic, economic, and programmatic assumptions used for long-range projections. The measures shown are applicable for the last 65 years of the 75‑year projection period, unless otherwise specified.²

Table II.C1.—Key Assumptions and Summary Measures
for Long-Range (75-Year) Projections^a

Assumption	Intermediate	Low-cost	High-cost
Demographic:
Total fertility rate (children per woman) for years 2050 and later	1.75	2.10	1.40
Annual percentage reduction in total age‑sex‑adjusted death rates	.73	.27	1.24
Annual net lawful permanent resident (LPR) immigration (in thousands)	788	1,000	595
Average annual net temporary or unlawfully present immigration (in thousands)	389	624	154
Economic:
Annual percentage change in productivity (total U.S. economy)	1.63	1.93	1.33
Annual percentage change in Consumer Price Index (CPI-W)	2.4	3.0	1.8
Average annual percentage change in average OASDI covered wage (nominal)	3.57	4.79	2.34
Average annual percentage change in average OASDI covered wage (real)	1.14	1.74	.53
Age-sex-adjusted unemployment rate (percent)	4.5	3.5	5.5
Annual trust fund new-issue real interest rate (percent) for years 2044 and later	2.3	2.8	1.8
Programmatic:
Age-sex-adjusted disabled-worker incidence rate (per thousand exposed)	4.6	3.7	5.5
Average age-sex-adjusted disabled-worker recovery rate (per thousand beneficiaries)	11.1	13.3	8.9

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a

Measures shown in this table are applicable for the last 65 years of the 75-year projection period (years 2036-2100), unless otherwise specified. See chapter V for additional details, including historical and projected values.

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1

A separate section on the uncertainty of the projections, beginning on page 22, highlights the implications of these alternative scenarios.

2

Details on near-term assumptions about growth rates and parameter levels are provided in Chapter V.