By Robert Pear,
For the first time in more than three decades, Social Security recipients will not get any increase in their benefits next year, federal forecasts show.
The absence of a cost-of-living adjustment, calculated under a formula set by law, will be a shock to older Americans already hit by plummeting home values, investment losses and rising health costs. More than 50 million people receive Social Security.
“Most seniors have never been through a year in which there was no Social Security COLA,” said David Certner, legislative counsel at AARP, the lobby for older Americans. Beneficiaries have received automatic cost-of-living adjustments every year since 1975. The increase this year was 5.8 percent.
Continue reading Social Security Increase Unlikely in ’10 or ’11
