Social Security faces a major financing shortfall. One policy option for addressing this shortfall would be to raise the earliest age at which individuals can claim their retirement benefits. A welfare analysis of such a policy change depends critically on how it affects living standards. This...

Das Solidarische Bürgergeld sieht die Gewährung eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens für Erwachsene in Höhe von monatlich 800 € pro Kopf und eines Kinderbürgergeldes in Höhe von 500 € pro Kind vor, von denen jeweils 200 € den Charakter einer Gesundheits- und Pflegeprämie haben....

Clemens Fuest, Andreas Peichl und Thilo Schaefer, Finanzwissenschaftliches Institut an der Universität zu Köln, analysieren die Beschäftigungs- und Finanzierungswirkungen des Grundeinkommens-Konzepts von Dieter Althaus. Ihrer Meinung nach entlastet das vorgeschlagene Modell nicht den...

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...

This is the introduction and summary to the fourth 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...

This paper focuses on Social Security benefit claiming behavior, a take-up decision that has been ignored in the previous literature. Using financial calculations and simulations based on an expected utility maximization model, we show that delaying benefit claim for a period of time after...

We present a detailed analysis of the incentives that Social Security provides for continued work at older ages. We do so using information on older males from the Health and Retirement Study over the 1980-1997 period to calculate the changes in the present discounted value of Social Security...

A critical question for Social Security policy is how program incentives affect retirement behavior. We use the wealth of new data available through the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to examine the impact of Social Security incentives on male retirement. We implement forward-looking models...

The populations in all industrialized countries are aging rapidly and life life expectancies are increasing. Yet older workers are leaving the labor force at younger and younger ages. In some countries, the labor force participation rates of 60 to 64 year old men have fallen by 75% over the past...