There exists a wide variety of tax treatments of pensions across the world. And the reasons for such a range of regimes are not clear. This note reviews the general principles of pension taxes and analyses the theoretical foundations of why pension incomes ought to be taxed specifically. To do...

A structural retirement model is estimated using data for tenured, male faculty employed in the 1970's at 26 high quality private colleges and universities. Simulations of raising and then abolishing the mandatory retirement age suggest very large increases in full time work by faculty members...

Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World represents the second stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security and labor. In the first volume, Jonathan Gruber and David A. Wise revealed enormous disincentives to continued work at older ages...

From age 62 through the full retirement age, the earnings test reduces the share of married men who work full time by about four percentage points, which entails a reduction of about ten percent in the number of married men of that age at full time work. In terms of the cash flow of the system,...

Many countries have social security systems that are currently financially unsustainable. Economists and policy makers have long studied this problem and identified two key causes. First, as declining birth rates raise the share of older persons in the population, the ratio of retirees to...

The future of Social Security is troubled, both in the United States and in most other developed countries with aging populations. As improvements in health care and changes in life styles enable retirees to live longer than ever before, the stress on national budgets will increase...

The future of Social Security is troubled, both in the United States and in most other developed countries with aging populations. As improvements in health care and changes in life styles enable retirees to live longer than ever before, the stress on national budgets will increase...