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Many experts are sounding the alarm that Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033. If Congress does not act, it will only be able to pay about 77% of promised benefits, according to the latest Social Security Trustees report.

Social Security becoming insolvent would create a crisis for a lot of low-income seniors who depend on that income, Andrew Biggs, author of “The Real Retirement Crisis,” said in a recent episode of the Decoding Retirement podcast.

However, he added that it’s “very, very unlikely to happen.”

Biggs is not among those who believe there’s a retirement crisis on the horizon or that Americans might have to plan for an across-the-board cut in their benefits. He argued that while Congress will eventually need to address Social Security, retirees and those nearing retirement are doing better financially than many people think.

“We can see how many people are offered retirement plans, how many people are contributing, how much they’re contributing, how much retirement savings are, how much retirement incomes are,” said Biggs, who is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“When you look at those things and you start pulling on the strings of this ‘retirement crisis’ narrative, it falls apart very, very quickly,” he said.

Read more: Retirement planning: A step-by-step guide

Biggs explained that his work in the Social Security Administration’s policy office, which used highly sophisticated models to forecast future retirement incomes and replacement rates, changed his thinking about the “retirement crisis.”

At the time, he said, career SSA staff would read alarming headlines about a looming crisis and note, “Our models aren’t showing that.”

In fact, they showed that future replacement rates for typical retirees would be about the same as today’s. By most measures — income, wealth, poverty rates, or even self-reported financial security — current retirees are doing well, Biggs said.

That doesn’t mean no one faces challenges. But when it comes to household retirement savings, the data tells a far more optimistic story.

In one example, a Vanguard survey asked retirees if the nation faces a retirement crisis, and about 60% said yes. Yet, when asked if their own finances amounted to a retirement crisis, only 4% agreed.

Other research from the Federal Reserve finds that just about 5% of retirees say they are truly struggling. That, he said, is a solvable problem — and one we should address directly rather than fueling fear over crises that don’t actually exist.

Biggs also noted that most people who should be saving for retirement actually are. He cited Federal Reserve data showing that retirees without any formal retirement plan often fare better than expected. This group, which you might assume faces the greatest hardship, has an average replacement rate of about 90% of pre-retirement income, Biggs said.

That’s partly because lower-income workers receive a higher replacement rate from Social Security, and partly because many, such as farmers or small-business owners, draw retirement income from sources outside formal plans.

In addition, Biggs noted that recent data showed that 88% of Americans approaching retirement have some form of retirement savings.

“So a lot of it’s just getting the numbers right,” he said. “The number of times I hear statistics being used like ‘nearly half of Americans approaching retirement have no retirement savings’ — those numbers are simply wrong. It’s really not even a matter of interpretation. They’re just wrong.”

So, how does Biggs reconcile his view with the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s (EBRI) annual Retirement Confidence Survey, which finds year after year that only about one in four Americans feels very confident they can maintain their pre-retirement standard of living in retirement?

“It is understandable that people will feel nervous about retirement,” he said. “If you think about it — say, if you’re 35 years old and you’re starting to save for retirement — you have to think about what is the path that your future earnings will take, which you don’t know. You have to think about what is the rate of return you can get on your savings. You have to think when you might retire. You have to think about how long you might live. And you get one shot to get it right.”

He pointed out Gallup data spanning more than two decades that asks Americans whether they believe they’ll have enough money in retirement to live comfortably. Historically, about 60% of working-age adults answer yes.

But when Gallup asks current retirees if they have enough money to live comfortably, that number jumps to 80%. That creates a significant gap, suggesting that many worry more about retirement than they ultimately need to.

Biggs admitted that it can all be quite confusing, especially given the number of pessimistic stories about retirement in the news.

A common concern is that 401(k) plans fall short for several reasons. Chief among them is the notion that only about half of US workers have access to an employer-sponsored plan, leaving the other half potentially saving little or nothing for retirement.

However, Biggs noted that there’s a difference between coverage and participation.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data shows that about 72% of private-sector employees are offered a retirement plan at work — most often a 401(k), though some are 403(b)s or the few remaining defined benefit plans — and a little over half of them participate.

Read more: How much should I contribute to my 401(k)?

For someone at the age and income level where saving for retirement is critical, lacking access to an employer-sponsored plan is a real concern, Biggs acknowledged. But at the same time, some of the statistics from household surveys showing much lower coverage rates are faulty.

In part, this is because of how these surveys are conducted, where “somebody shows up at your door, calls you on the phone and asks, ‘Are you offered a 401(k) at work?'”

“[The Social Security Administration] did a study where they looked at these surveys … and then they matched those survey responses up to income tax data, which showed whether they were in a plan or not,” Biggs said. And what they found is that many people answered these questions wrong, he noted.

“When they used income tax data for these very same people, the participation rate rose from about 50% to about 60% to 62%,” he said. “So a lot of this data … we just assume the numbers are correct, and they’re not.”

If there is a crisis, Biggs wrote in his book, it’s not with people saving through 401(k)s or IRAs or pensions — it’s “almost entirely on the governmental side.”

“Mathematically,” he said, “we do either have to pay more into the system or receive less out of it. Obviously, the sooner Congress does something about it, the better off we are. But Congress has known about this long-term funding gap literally for over 40 years, and every year, including this year, they choose to kick the can down the road, and that just makes the problems more difficult to solve.”

Given that, what advice would Biggs give to folks who are planning for a potential increase in taxes or a reduction in benefits?

“If you’re a lower-income American, to be honest, I would say really don’t worry about it, especially if you’re somebody age 50 today who’s approaching retirement,” he said, noting that most Social Security reform proposals keep benefits in place for low earners or increase them.

Read more: When will I get my Social Security check? Payment schedule for 2025.

But if you’re somebody in the middle or at the top of the income distribution, what you might want to do to prepare for Social Security’s financing problems is save a little bit more in your 401(k) today, Biggs said.

“Save an extra percentage point or two toward retirement every year,” he said. “If we decide to fix Social Security by raising taxes, you can sort of dial back your contributions because those higher taxes will enable the system to pay higher benefits. But if, on the other hand, solvency is addressed by reducing benefits, you’ll be prepared. That’s something I think people can reasonably do today to protect themselves against whatever might happen in the future.”

Got questions about retirement? Email Robert Powell at yfpodcast@yahooinc.com, and we’ll do our best to answer it in a future episode of Decoding Retirement.

Each Tuesday, retirement expert and financial educator Robert Powell gives you the tools to plan for your future on Decoding Retirement. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.

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