We evaluate several actual and hypothetical sustainable PAYGO pension structures, including: (1) versions of the US Social Security system with annual adjustments of taxes or benefits to maintain fiscal balance; (2) Sweden's Notional Defined Contribution system and several variants developed to...

The heated debate about how to reform Social Security has come to a standstill because the view of most Democrats (that Social Security must be a defined benefits plan similar in spirit to the current system) seems irreconcilable with the proposals supported by many Republicans (to create a...

This paper analyzes changes in the progressivity of the Social Security benefit formula as a means of lessening the risk inherent in investment-based Social Security reform. Focusing on a single cohort of workers, it simulates the distribution of benefits subject to both earnings and financial...

Around the world, Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) public pension programs face serious long-term fiscal problems due primarily to actual and projected population aging, and most appear unsustainable as currently structured. Some have proposed the replacement of such plans with systems of fully funded...

Current costs are high, and the pressures will increase due to population aging and negative incentive effects. This paper focuses on the pension reform process in Europe. It links the causes for current problems to the cures required to make the pay-as-you-go entitlement programs in Continental...

"This ninth volume of the International Social Security series, which studies the social security and retirement experiences of 12 developed countries, examines the effects of pension reform on employment at older ages. In the two decades since the project began, a dramatic decline in men's...

Pensions and contemporary socioeconomic change / Assar Lindbeck -- Different approaches to pension reform from an economic point of view / Jonathan Gruber, David A. Wise -- Labor mobility, redistribution, and pension reform in Europe / Alain Jousten, Pierre Pestieau -- France: the difficult path...

This volume presents the third phase of the project. An analysis and country-by-country comparison of the effects of social security incentives on retirement behavior in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the United States.

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...