Why did Congress enact the WEP?
To fully understand the reason, you need to know that a Social Security benefit replaces a percentage of your pre-retirement earnings. The benefit is weighted toward lower-paid workers. The SSA uses a formula for computing the primary insurance amount (the “PIA,” roughly speaking, is someone’s Social Security benefit). The formula provides individuals with low average lifetime wages a proportionally higher rate of return on their contributions to Social Security than individuals with relatively high average lifetime wages. As a result, if you are a lower-paid worker, you will receive a Social Security benefit equal to about 60 percent of your pre-retirement earnings. By contrast, if you are a higher-paid individual, your average replacement rate is about 25 percent. If you have spent most of your career in non-SS-covered employment with a SLG and a minimal amount of time in SS-covered employment, you will appear to the SSA as a lower-paid worker. Congress enacted the WEP in the belief
