The extent of the demographic changes in Europe is dramatic and will deeply affect future labor, financial and goods markets. The expected strain on public budgets and especially social security has already received prominent attention, but aging poses many other economic challenges that...

We analyze older individuals' debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we examine three different cohorts (individuals age 56–61) in 1992, 2004, and 2010 to evaluate...

China has legislated a mixed social security pension system with a defined benefit pay-as-you-go portion and an investment-based defined contribution portion. This paper analyses the economics of these two types of systems in the Chinese context and calculates the advantage to China of using an...

This paper details a method for implementing personal retirement accounts (PRAs) as a part of Social Security reform. The approach described here answers the following questions: how funds are collected and credited to each participants' retirement account; how money is invested; and how funds are...

The President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security proposed three reform plans. Two, analyzed here, restore actuarial balance in the absence of individual accounts. One achieves this balance solely through benefit reductions. The other uses new dedicated revenue to cover one-third of the...

The U.S. Social Security system has helped keep many retirees out of poverty. However, according to the Social Security and Medicare Trustees, Social Security faces a future financial shortfall of $10.4 trillion in present value. This enormous imbalance has received little attention in public...

Against a background of projections of sharply increasing elderly dependency rates, workers in the major industrial economies are apprehensive that their social security benefit entitlements will be cut before or after they retire, leaving them with inadequate retirement income. This paper looks...

Recent changes legislated in the U.S. Social Security system are changing the economic incentives to work and retire. Some older workers will respond to these new incentives by retiring at different ages. This paper evaluates the signs and magnitudes of these responses. Using a representative...

Projected demographic changes in industrialized and developing countries vary in extent and timing but will reduce the share of the population in working age everywhere. Conventional wisdom suggests that this will increase capital intensity with falling rates of return to capital and increasing...

A problem facing the United States is financing retirement consumption as its population ages. Proposals for switching to a saving-for-retirement system that do not rely on high payroll taxes have been challenged on the grounds that welfare for some cohorts will fall. We show how to devise a...