See how Social Security retirement benefits stack up globally

So far, neither President Biden nor former president Donald Trump has made shoring up Social Security central to his presidential campaign. But some American policy experts are looking abroad for lessons.

Many countries face the same pressures as the United States: Their aging populations have fewer workers to support retirees. But quite a few countries spend more on their public-pension programs than the United States does, offering more generous benefits and lower retirement ages.

Making international comparisons is complicated because of economic, political and demographic differences. But Wellesley College economist Courtney Coile, who has long studied public-pension systems around the world, notes that many countries have enacted policy changes in recent years, while Social Security is largely unchanged since the last major overhaul in 1983.

In part, Coile said, that’s because the 1983 reform helped lock in long-run savings, so the United States has spent less over time. “One big point of difference is the benefit level is less generous … than in a bunch of countries,” she said.

Here are five charts that show how Social Security compares with retirement systems around the world.

In the broadest terms, the financing for Social Security works the same way as it does in pension systems around the world: Workers, employers or both pay a portion of the salary as a tax into a government fund during the years of employment. Then, when those workers retire, they are entitled to benefits via a regular check. So one way to collect more and spend less on public pensions is to raise the age at which people start receiving those benefits.

The U.S. statutory retirement age is 66 or 67, depending on your birth year, higher than all but nine countries. Worldwide, the median is 61. In some countries, workers can choose to retire at a slightly younger age — in the United States, as young as 62 — and take lower benefits. Or you can wait a few years in exchange for more generous checks.

Several countries have adjusted their retirement ages upward in recent years or have plans to do so. Even so, their workers generally retire younger than Americans. Such reforms are often a political minefield: In France, for example, people furiously protested in the streets over President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

For their part, Trump and Biden have both campaigned on a pledge not to cut Social Security benefits, including by raising the retirement age.

When workers retire and start collecting benefits, the change in their standard of living can vary tremendously. Social Security only replaces about 40 percent of the average American’s paycheck, so people who rely primarily on Social Security often see a steep drop-off in monthly income.

In many other countries, benefits are more generous and come closer to fully replacing workers’ paychecks. Americans, by contrast, rely more on private pensions and tax-advantaged savings accounts such as 401(k)s, with contributions made during their working lives matched by employers. But not all workers have much or any savings — and fewer and fewer have union or company pensions — a point that argues against across-the-board benefit cuts to achieve Social Security’s solvency.

Social Security is one of the priciest items in the U.S. federal budget, as are pension systems in many other countries. At 7.5 percent of gross domestic product, the United States spends about the same on Social Security as the OECD average, though much less than some industrialized nations such as France, Greece and Italy.

Social Security would be substantially reinforced if…