The Earnings Public-Use File (EPUF) contains complete information on annual Social Security-covered earnings for a sample of 3.13 million Americans who had earnings in at least one year between 1951 and 2006. The panel data are used to examine patterns and trends in lifetime earnings. The EPUF...

This paper uses a heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher...