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...

Im Koalitionsvertrag vom 14. März 2018 wird angekündigt, die Leistungen und Beiträge der Gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung durch eine sogenannte »doppelte Haltelinie« festzuschreiben. Konkret soll das Netto-Standardrentenniveau vor Steuern nicht unter 48% absinken und gleichzeitig der...

Axel Börsch-Supan, Tabea Bucher-Koenen und Johannes Rausch, MEA – Munich Center for the Economics of Aging am Max-Planck-Institut für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik, München, zeigen, dass die Lage der GRV bis 2030, dem Zeithorizont des aktuellen Rentenversicherungsberichts, stabil im Sinne...

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...

Germany, like many other countries, has undergone a series of pension reforms since the 1980s which generally decreased benefit generosity and increased the retirement age due to demographic pressures. This paper investigates whether these reforms have increased income and wealth inequality...

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...

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...

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...