This text offers an understanding of what the US Social Security programme has accomplished in the past, the challenges it faces, and possibilities for the future. Contemporary issues, policies, benefits, and proposed reforms are outlined.

Chapter 1 Social Security: Is It an Endangered Species?; Chapter 2 Getting from Here to There: A Capsule History of Social Security; Chapter 3 Things Are Not What They Seem: How Social Security Works; Chapter 4 Social Security and the Copernican Question; Chapter 5 How to Save Social Security;