Income adequacy and social security differences between the foreign-born and US-Born

This paper projects retirement income and Social Security taxes and benefits among the foreign-born and U.S.-born in the United States. Focusing on the Depression and the late baby boom birth cohorts, we find that foreign-born persons have higher poverty rates than the U.S.-born, and as a group do not receive higher lifetime net benefits from Social Security than do the U.S.-born. However, persons from the late baby boom cohort who immigrated after 1969 have higher projected rates of return in Social Security than do U.S.-born persons of the same birth cohort.