Ein Grundprinzip der Gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung in Deutschland ist das der „Teilhabeäquivalenz“, das die Proportionalität zwischen Rentenansprüchen und Beitragszahlungen ausdrückt. Verfechter des Systems rechtfertigen dieses Prinzip mit dem Ziel der Verteilungsneutralität. Gerade...

A vast literature has examined the impact of family income on the health and development outcomes of children. Income may improve child outcomes through two mechanisms. First, income may improve development outcomes if it improves a family’s ability to purchase direct inputs into child...

We consider both theoretically and empirically the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on precautionary savings behavior. Simulations of a stochastic life cycle model suggest that increasing the generosity of UI will substantially lower the asset holdings of the median worker, and that this...

This is the introduction and summary to the sixth phase of an ongoing project on Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. The first phase described the retirement incentives inherent in plan provisions and documented the strong relationship across countries between social...

We study the design of retirement and disability policies and illustrate the often observed exit from the labor force of healthy workers through disability insurance schemes. In our model, two types of individuals, disabled and leisure-prone ones, have the same disutility for labor and cannot be...

Social insurance for the elderly is judged responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or in a first-best setting, there would be no such trend. However, when first-best instruments are not available, because health and productivity are not...

This paper studies the design of pension schemes in a society where fertility is endogenous and parents differ in their ability to raise children. In a world with perfect information, a pay-as-you-go social security system is characterized by equal pensions for all but different contributions...

A large international literature has documented the labor market distortions associated with social security benefits for near-retirees. In this paper, we investigate the 'other side' of social security programs, seeking to document improvements in wellbeing arising from the provision of public...

The single most important long run fiscal issue facing the developed world is the aging of its populations. In virtually every developed country, there will be a steep increase in the ratio of the elderly to the working age population over the first half of the 21st century. The purpose of our...