Since the mid-1990s, California’s state spending has been increasing at an impressive pace. Governor Gray Davis’s most recent budget proposal is $102 billion—almost eight percent higher than last year’s proposed budget—and does not fully account for changing economic conditions and the state’s electricity crisis. Figure 1 in this study breaks down the governor’s proposed budget by spending area.

Women’s groups and the media often portray proposals to replace the current Social Security system with a system of individually-owned retirement accounts as discriminatory towards women – believing that government’s current Social Security system is better designed to provide a secure retirement. As the debate on the best way to save the Social Security system from its looming insolvency heats up, it is becoming increasingly important to reveal the many ways in which Social Security’s current design is actually harming women’s prospects for a secure retirement.