The Third Millennium's UFO survey has become the flagship for the presumption that confidence in Social Security has collapsed and is pulling down support for the program. It turns out, however, that the UFO survey has been falsely sold. Journalists mistakenly conveyed the impression that Americans weighed the relative likelihood of UFOs existing and Social Security surviving and found UFOs more probable, but in fact the actual survey question never offered respondents a direct comparison. Instead, it offered two separate questions, with the Social Security question appearing fifth and the UFO question fourteenth (as the survey's last substantive question before some standard demographic items.)

A 1997 survey by EBRI offered respondents the direct choice that Third Millennium falsely claimed to have posed. EBRI asked, "Which do you have greater confidence in: receiving Social Security benefits after retirement or alien life exists in outer space?" Repudiating the claims of Third Millennium, EBRI found that Americans overwhelming sided with Social Security over UFO by a whopping 71%-26% margin. (Even among Generation Xers [33 or younger], the margin remained a stunning 63%-33%.) Although these results may be inflated, they clearly indicate the inaccuracy of Third Millennium's report.⁶

Third Millennium not only fabricated its results on UFOs and Social Security but also peddled an old story about public opinion. Confidence in Social Security's future has been low since the late 1970s. Table 7 presents a survey of public confidence since 1975. Confidence in the future of the program stood at 65% in 1975 but steadily dropped to 32% by 1982 and has never returned to its earliest levels. The New York Time/CBS News surveys have also probed the nation's confidence by asking respondents if Social Security "will have the money available to provide the benefits you expect for your retirement." Unfortunately, this series (which we report below) begins later and contains half as many time points as that presented in Table 7; but the up and down trends for common years are identical.

Recent rhetoric that Americans have suddenly lost hope in Social Security lacks support. The evidence suggests that confidence in Social Security's future has been low for two decades. Weak confidence is not a new development. Moreover, Americans' confidence has not plummeted to new lows during the past few years; it seems to be stabilizing around 40%. Finally, measuring Americans' confidence is sensitive to whether they are asked about receiving "the benefits you expect," the "future the Social Security system," or more modestly, receiving some benefits. Finally, while Americans have low confidence in the general future of the program, a 1997 EBRI survey found that 58% believed they would receive some payment.

Low confidence in Social Security is concentrated in certain segments of the population. Table 8 presents the demographic breakdowns of a series of five surveys that the New York Time and CBS conducted on public confidence in Social Security. The data in Table 8 suggest that 50% to 80% of several subgroups believe that Social Security will have the funds to provide the retirement benefits that are expected. The most confident are seniors as well as those with less income and education (many of whom are seniors). Seniors are already receiving benefits and therefore have tangible reasons for confidence, while individuals with less income or education harbor low expectations. High income earners have higher expectations and may feel particularly threatened, while the most educated are members of younger cohorts and are likely to follow the drumbeat of warnings issued by policy makers and highlighted by journalists.

The demographic data from the series presented in Table 7 have been graphed in Figures 4, 5, 6. Figures 4 and 6 suggest that the superior confidence of the seniors and, to a lesser extent, the less well educated remains stable between 1989 and 1997. Figure 5 indicates, though, that the least well off, who expressed relatively higher confidence through 1995, are no longer more hopeful of its future than other income groups.