This paper identifies the key economic issues that must be addressed in the debate over a privatized social security system. We examine a two-pillar plan. The first pillar would consist of a demogrant: a small indexed pension of the same dollar amount for all retirees who had contributed to the...

Disability Insurance (DI), which provides income support to disabled workers, has been criticized for inducing a large fall in the labor force participation rate of older workers. We study the effects of one policy response designed to address this moral hazard problem: raising the rate at which...

Proposed changes in the U.S. Social Security provisions include increasing the normal retirement age from 65 to 67 and changing from 3% to 8% the increase in benefits for each year that retirement is delayed after normal retirement. The paper considers the interaction between these changes and...

The paper considers the effect on widows' poverty of changes in Social Security survivorship benefits, by a reduction in couples' benefits so that total Social Security cost is unchanged. A twenty percent increase in survivorship benefits, for example, would reduce the 1989 poverty rate of...

Changes in pension plan retirement formulas and benefit provisions over the last decade are examined, drawing on data collected and tabulated by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Survey of medium and large firms. The evidence shows that pension provisions have changed a great deal...

Pensions have played a key role in the transformation of the way workers are paid in the US labor market This paper reviews and synthesizes what is known about the form and function of employer-provided pensions, and identifies areas where further information is most needed. for increasing our...

Most retirement studies examine older married couples in which the husband is the sole earner. This paper extends the focus of analysis to examine older dual-earner couples. It further evaluates the impact of Social Security reforms on older working couples1 retirement ages and retirement...

Recent changes legislated in the U.S. Social Security system are changing the economic incentives to work and retire. Some older workers will respond to these new incentives by retiring at different ages. This paper evaluates the signs and magnitudes of these responses. Using a representative...

This paper examines the role of economic factors in determining retirement behavior using a unique new data archive on more than 8,700 workers covered by ten different pension plans. We build on our earlier work by estimating several different retirement models including linear as well as...

Does retirement behavior react predictably to economic incentives? Evidence on this question would be useful to policy makers responsible for work and retirement programs affecting the elderly. This paper reviews the lessons and limitations of recent economics literature on pensions, earnings,...