It's very obviously not the total number of people that matters. It's the difference in the number of people being funded and doing the funding. The math is fairly straightforward:

# of Boomers - Greatest Gen > Millennials - Boomers

This means that Millennials will have a greater burden than Boomers did. Which means Millennials will live with fewer resources.

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jjav 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't follow this comment at all, sorry.

Presumably you're comparing people of working age contributing to social security vs. people in retirement receiving social security. That age can vary but let's pick 65 as a typical retirement age.

Here's another data source:

https://theworlddata.com/us-population-by-age/

There are 205.7 million working age adults vs. 61.2 million of age 65 and older.

From where do you get the "fewer young people paying to support an much larger number of older folks"?

	▲	scoofy 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>I don't follow this comment at all, sorry. I worry that someone here who can't follow a simple a population delta mapping from one generation to another isn't exactly arguing in good faith. >Presumably you're comparing people of working age contributing to social security vs. people in retirement receiving social security. No, we are talking about the previous net contributors (vs receivers) -- that is Boomers vs Greatest Gen in the 1980s -- versus the current net contributors (vs receivers), e.g. Millennials vs Boomers now. That number has gone down dramatically, and because of that, social security is effectively insolvent. >Under the current structure, the Social Security Administration estimates that Social Security will pay full benefits until 2033, when it will be forced to reduce benefits by about 23%. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2026/05/12/the-comin... The reason why it's insolvent now is that the relative number of payment contributors to payment receivers has gone down dramatically. Today there are "fewer young people per old person" than there were in previous generations.