<p>OldinJersey - I agree with you. We worked several college basketball games as a girlscout fundraiser and I was apalled at the number of young and able bodied people occupying seats in the handicapped row (the only seats without stairs). Mostly situations where season ticket holders had given their tickets to family or friends for the game. The policy was that, if they had the tickets, they could sit there. But when, as an usher, I have a person quite unable to use the stairs (even temporarily because they have had surgery or something) it just made my blood boil to see healthy teens or 20 somethings sitting there without any embarrasment.</p>
<p>Aaargh! I tried to post this earlier but CC went down again..... </p>
<p>This is in reply to Oldinjersey's comments about the asset protection issue:</p>
<p>The discrepency is not from a policy designed to favor marriage; the law is framed in neutral terms and the original, statutory figures seemed pretty reasonable, with a single parent getting about 70% of the allowance afforded to married couples. However, the law requires that the Dept. of Education recalculate according to a specific formula, and my guess is that something has gone awry with the formula. Here is what they are required to do:
[quote]
Such revised table shall be developed by determining the present value cost, rounded to the nearest $100, of an annuity that would provide, for each age cohort of 40 and above, a supplemental income at age 65 (adjusted for inflation) equal to the difference between the moderate family income (as most recently determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics), and the current average social security retirement benefits.
[/quote]
TITLE 20 > CHAPTER 28 > SUBCHAPTER IV > Part E > ?1087rr
<a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/20/usc_sec_20_00001087--rr000-.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/20/usc_sec_20_00001087--rr000-.html</a></p>
<p>As noted above, the original statutory amount did not have a huge discrepency -- for example, I am age 53 and the numbers for my age cohort in ?1087rr are:</p>
<p>53 45,700 (2 parents) 31,800 (1 parent)</p>
<p>other sample ages:
40 32,400 23,700
60 56,500 38,100</p>
<p>But the law specifically also states that schedule is to be supplanted by the the agency determination "For each award year after award year 1993?1994" -- so the above number was for 1993, not now. The current schedule can be found in FAFSA publications -- Google the phrase "FAFSA EFC formula" and you will find them; the asset protection table is on page 19 of the EFC formula book (available in PDF format). The 2007-2008 entry for my age is:</p>
<p>53 53,000 21,000</p>
<p>for the other sample ages:
40 38,100 15,700
60 64,300 25,100</p>
<p>My guess is that its an artifact of the math in the formula; and the fact that in a 2-parent home it is far more likely that one of the partners has worked less than full time and may not qualify from their own work experience for significant social security retirement benefit. From what I could find online from other sources, the average monthly social security benefit in 2006 for a married couple both receiving benefits is $1,648 ($19,776 annually); For single recipients the average monthly benefit is $967 ($11,604 annually) (or almost 60% of the average for the couple). I couldn't find what figure the BLS sets as "moderate" family income -- but my guess is that is that if that number is significantly less for a household of 1 than for a household of 2, then that is where the discrepancy may be created. In other words, statistically the single person might get a greater percentage of their post age 65 retirement income from Social Security, so therefore the math may work out to requiring the married couple to save more money. </p>
<p>In any case, you would really have to get hold of those figures and do the math before you could challenge anything. On its face, the formula doesn't seem unfair. But I think it would make more sense for them to come up with a set formula for figuring out the allowance for one parent, and then use a simple ratio to come up with the amount for two (or the other way around). In other words, the law could be written in such a way that the figure for one parent would alway be 65% of the figure for two, or whatever other ratio seemed to make sense. </p>
<p>The problem is that the numbers really don't reflect reality. It may be that single people on average get a higher percentage of their retirement need met through social security, but in real life things are a lot more precarious for the single person. The married couple have each other to fall back on in the event either one of them loses their job or becomes disabled prior to retirement. So common sense tells us that it is more important for the single person to build up a strong reserve. I mean... lets say that I had saved exactly that $21,000 that is exempt -- if I was injured and couldn't work for a year, how long would that $21K last me? There's no other income coming in, no one else to support me. Obviously the money would be gone in a matter of months. Meanwhile, the married couple is sitting on $53K -- and for all we know, with the FAFSA formula, it is possible that the younger partner is <em>much</em> younger, such as a 53 year old married to a vigorous & healthy 42 year old. It also makes no sense that over the past 15 years, my asset protection allowance has gone down, whereas the allowance for the married couple has gone up -- this probably really reflects changing demographics among social security retirees, when in fairness the changes should reflect increases in cost of living.</p>
<p>Very cool to find out the history of the Asset Protection Allowance! To distill that to plain english, the APA is intended to be the cost of an annuity to bring up the average social security benefit to an average moderate family income, for the oldest parent at 65. The problem is that the ratio of single to married has changed from 70% to about 40% over the past 13 years. </p>
<p>Either the wonks at the Dept of Educ have miscalculated somewhere, or the statistics actually support the fairness of the married-single discrepancy as Congress intended.</p>
<p>And, as is the case with many aspects of FAFSA, there is unfairness in its simplicity. This APA thing is an attempt to make a one size fits all solution, and what we have is a one size fits nobody solution instead.</p>