A program of Personal Retirement Accounts (PRAs) funded by deposits equal to 2.3 percent of earnings (up to the Social Security maximum) would permit retirees to receive more income in retirement than with the current Social Security program while at the same time making it unnecessary to...

Although there have been several studies of the effect of social security on private saving, there has been no attempt to measure the welfare cost of this distortion. The present paper develops an analytic framework for this evaluation and presents numerical calculations

In a 1974 paper in the Journal of Political Economy I discussed the theoretical ambiguity of the effect of social security on private saving and presented statistical evidence that social security does on balance depress saving. Recently, an error was detected in the computer program that was...

The social security program will pay benefits of more than $100 billion in 1978. Public transfers on this scale are large enough to have profound effects on the behavior of the U.S. economy. The most important effect, although not the only one, is likely to be the impact of social security on...

The U.S. Social Security Administration, in cooperation with similar agencies in other countries, recently developed estimates of social security benefits for twelve major industrial countries. The present paper uses these data to estimate the effects of social security benefits on saving and...

This paper, which was presented as the 1979 Frank Paish Lecture to the British Association of University Teachers of Economics, provides a non-technical summary of the recent studies of the effects of social security on private saving. The first section discusses the theoretical indeterminacy of...

The distribution of wealth is one of the most important and least studied features of our economic life. A lack of good data on household wealth is the primary reason for the inadequate attention to this subject. Moreover, the evidence that is available from household surveys and estate records...

This paper examines how labor income volatility and social security benefits can influence lifecycle household portfolios. We examine how much the individual optimally saves and where, taking into account liquid financial wealth and annuities, and stocks as well as bonds. Higher labor income...

In 1980, Chile dramatically reformed its retirement system, replacing what was an old insolvent PAYGO program with a new structure that relies heavily on funded defined contribution individual accounts. In addition, eligibility and benefit requirements were standardized, and a safety net for...

Governments around the world have enacted or are currently considering fundamental structural reforms of their Social Security pension programs. The key feature in these reforms is a shift from a pure pay-as-you-go tax-financed system, in which taxes on current workers are primarily distributed...