Over the last several decades, the volatility of family income has increased markedly, and own earnings volatility has remained relatively flat. Volatility may affect retirement wealth, depending on whether volatility affects accrued pension contributions or withdrawals or earnings credited...

While growing fiscal pressures and increasing life expectancy have prompted calls to raise retirement ages so that lifetime benefits would be concentrated in older ages, some fear that this change—without other adjustments—might harm long-career, lower-wage workers. Tying retirement benefit...

Our project uses DYNASIM3, the Urban Institute’s dynamic microsimulation model of the U.S. population, to simulate several alternative systems of Social Security auxiliary benefits. We specifically consider earnings sharing, a system in which a husband’s and a wife’s earnings records are...

Immigration is transforming the U.S. labor force with important consequences for Social Security’s adequacy and finances. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to rich administrative data on lifetime earnings and benefit receipt, we measure the...

Rapid growth in the earnings of the highest earners over the past two and a half decades has contributed to strains on Social Security’s finances and made projecting lifetime earnings on a year-by-year basis – already a complicated technical problem – even more challenging. This project...

Most analyses of Social Security reforms ignore interactions with the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. We explicitly consider such interactions using a microsimulation model. The basic reform we examine reduces Social Security benefits by the percentage required to approach 75-year...

Declines in health and financial resources lead many older Americans to turn to coresidence and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for support. A growing literature examines coresidence choices and SSI participation, stressing the importance of each for vulnerable aged persons....

As interest in proposals to restore Social Security solvency rises, it’s timely to examine whether current policy analyses provide adequate information on important distributional questions. This project explores measures of changes in Social Security benefits’ adequacy, horizontal equity,...

A patchwork of public programs—primarily Social Security Disability Insurance (DI), workers’ compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and veterans’ benefits—provides income supports to people unable to work. Yet, questions persist about the effectiveness of these programs. This...

Recent growth in wage inequality has important implications for Social Security solvency and the distribution of benefits. Because only earnings below the taxable maximum are subject to Social Security payroll taxes, wage growth that is concentrated among very high earners will generate lower...