There were 24.5 million military veterans in the United States in 2004.  Of these, 1.7 million were women, and 9.5 million of the total number of veterans were age 65 or older in 2004.

"Veterans Day originated as "Armistice Day" on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation in 1954 to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor those who served in all American wars. The day has evolved into also honoring living military veterans with parades and speeches across the nation. A national ceremony takes place at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

Politicians of both parties agree that the pending insolvency of Social Security stems from a demographic problem: the declining number of workers relative to retirees. Yet few politicians appear willing to explore the causes of that declining ratio or why fertility rates have declined, particularly since the mid-1960s. Perhaps that is because a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which documents the negative impact of Social Security on fertility rates, suggests that Congress itself deserves some blame.

In this study, three economists from the University of Minnesota chart the growth of public pension systems against the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) using a cross-section of data of 104 countries from 1997 and a panel study of eight developed countries from 1960 to the present. In both the cross-section and the panel study, the economists found a "strong negative correlation" between the two variables. Depending on the countries studied, they found that the expansion of public pensions systems accounted for between 50 and 80 percent of the decline in fertility rates over the last 50 years.

More specifically, they found that "an increase in the size of the social security system on the order of 10% of GDP is associated with a reduction in TFR of between 0.7 and 1.6 children." Although expressing caution about causal interpretations, they nonetheless claim that their findings are "highly statistically significant and fairly robust to the inclusion of other possible explanatory variables," including infant mortality, income, and female labor force participation. They also note that in countries where the TFR was at least 3.0 children per woman, none had a social security tax rate of more than 4 percent, leading them to conclude that increases in social security taxes does reduce the number of children couples have and that this effect "is fairly large in size."

The correlation explains variations in the TFR over time as well as between Europe and this side of the Atlantic. As they observe: "Fertility rates were much higher in the USA and Europe around 1950, when both groups of countries had a much smaller pension system than they do now; since the 1970s fertility rates have been consistently lower in Europe than in the USA, and the former countries have a substantially larger pension system than the latter."

While the economists refrain from drafting policy recommendations, their findings suggest that if President Bush really wants to offer workers a promising future, he needs to think more in terms of what kind of changes in Social Security would best shore up the family and fertility so that young Americans might be able to enjoy more children and grandchildren in old age.