As a major source of income for retired persons in the United States, Social Security benefits directly influence economic well-being. That fact underscores the importance of measuring Social Security income accurately in household surveys. Using Social Security Administration (SSA) records, we...

Living standards in old age are affected both by the pension system and the tax system. Yet, little research analyses the interaction between both systems. In this paper, we connect the principles of the pension system (solidarity vs. insurance) to the principles of the tax system (vertical...

This paper develops estimates of lifetime money's worth and redistributional outcomes under the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program for all past, present, and future birth cohorts affected by the program through the cohort born in 2100. The estimates presented in this study...

Notwithstanding the recent reforms, there is a consensus amongst international organizations that in Portugal both Social Security and the civil servants' pension scheme (the CGA) continue to be financially unsustainable over the long term. This paper focuses on Social Security (the private...

The poor live paycheck to paycheck and are repeatedly exposed to strong cyclical income fluctuations. We investigate whether such income fluctuations affect risk preference among the poor. If risk preference temporarily changes around payday, optimal decisions made before payday may no longer be...

This paper develops a new combined-wealth measure by augmenting data on net worth from the Survey of Consumer Finances with estimates of defined benefit (DB) pension and expected Social Security wealth. We use this concept to explore retirement preparation among two groups of households in...

This paper discusses design errors in public pension systems, using Hungary as an illus-tration. When the communist political and economic system was replaced by democracy and market economy, the subsequent governments had even greater difficulties in designing consistent pension reforms than...

This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging, i.e. declining...