The objective of this Element is to provide an analysis of social protection from an economic perspective. It relies on tools and methods widely used in public and insurance economics and comprises four main section besides the introduction. The first section is devoted to the design of social...

This paper examines the benefits of supplemental pension plans by comparing the costs and benefits, in terms of equity, of public retirement plans and private plans in OECD member countries, particularly focusing on the income distribution of the elderly.

This paper focuses on the effect ageing has on intragenerational equity in seven LIS countries. Using current distribution schemes as baselines, the authors compare the projected effects of four benefit scenarios on aged inequality.

The study of optimal long-term care (LTC) social insurance is generally carried out under the utilitarian social criterion, which penalizes individuals who have a lower capacity to convert resources into well-being, such as dependent elderly individuals or prematurely dead individuals. This...

An overlapping generations models is constructed in which individual wealth is related to educational attainment, and in which liquidity constraints may induce children to invest in a sub-optimal level of education given their ability. Borrowing for educational attainment is obtained from within...