In this paper we investigate why and to what extent the government should have a social security trust fund, and how it should manage the fund in the face of demographic shocks, based on a simple overlapping-generations model. We show that the government should have a trust fund in some form,...

Social security tends to be unsustainable in nature in that it reduces individuals' demand for children as a measure to support their old age, which in turn undermines the financial base of social security. Using a simple overlapping-generations model with endogenous fertility and income...

In a stochastic economy with overlapping generations, fiscal policy affects the allocation of aggregate risks. The paper shows how to compute the welfare effects of marginal policy changes that shift risk across cohorts, in general and for an application to social security equity investments. I...