Risking Old Age in America.

• Author: Longman, Phillip

Public affairs books scheduled to be published this month.

Risking Old Age in America. Richard J. Margolis. Westview, Press, $36.50. "To a nation that runs more on instinct than on intellect," Margolis writes in the conclusion of his book, "elderly poverty may be the sternest cerebral challenge of all." Why elderly poverty is a bigger brain-twister than, say, childhood poverty, Margolis doesn't say, but sure enough it's a tough subject. Thinking about old age as a policy issue brings with it some of the darkest and most uncomfortable emotions that can beset a human being: namely, the absurd injustice that we are all slowly dying, and that most of us can't afford to grow old. Unfortunately, Margolis doesn't meet the intellectual challenge he recognized would confront him in trying to make sense of America's aging policies. He has gathered telling statistics. He has mastered the complex legislative histories of programs like Social Security and Medicare. He has interviewed policy experts. Most impressive, he has traveled across the country listening to the elderly poor tell how they have been disserved by government programs designed to benefit them. But having so diligently reported on the failure of Social Security and Medicare to end poverty among the elderty, Margolis ignores his own evidence and boldly defends spending still more on programs that distribute without regard to need, using arguments that are as tired as they are irrelevant to today's circumstances. it is a triumph of compassionate instinct over intellect that is almost embarrassing to witness.

Margolis certainly has all the facts he needs to demonstrate the moral, if not the political, faiture of Social Security. And indeed he is critical of the program. He notes, for example, that "the relatively generous benefits that Congress has made possible over the past generation have done almost nothing for the bottom echelon of Social Security recipients, serving only to widen the gap between the elderly poor and the elderly affluent." Social Security, he goes on to observe, "turns poor wage earners into still poorer beneficiaries." That is a powerful indictment that many others have made before. Yet Margolis's conclusion from it is to declare "the natural superiority of universal entitlements-programs for everybody-to means-tested benefits designed exclusively for the poor."

Margolis knows enough about the politics of Social Security during the last generation to realize that...