This paper examines the labor force activity and timing of benefit claims of workers aged 65-69 in response to the removal of the retirement earnings test in 2000. We use the 1 percent sample of longitudinal Social Security administrative data that covers the period from 4 years before to 4...

In a recent paper (2006), Pestieu et.al. showed that the optimal payroll tax rate for the PAYG pension in an open large economy should increase as number of countries increases. This rather counterintuitive result -increasing the factor mobility makes redistribution easier-depends on a crucial...

It is argued that a PAYGO system may have useful allocative functions in that it serves as an insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for 'rotten kids' who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. It is true that the system has a moral hazard effect in terms of...

The falling ratio of workers to retirees in the United States has raised concerns about Social Security's ability to continue to provide a base level of support for all retired workers and to remain in balance with all of government's other fiscal obligations. Of alternative plans that have been...

Social security is increasingly debated in terms of alleged effects of public pensions on economic efficiency. The author reviews the history and rationale for public provision of retirement income, then argues that the efficiency effects of such schemes are negligible. Social security reform in...

This paper quantifies the effects of social security on capital accumulation and wealth distribution in a life cycle framework with altruistic individuals. The main findings of this paper are that the current U.S. social security system has a significant impact on capital accumulation and wealth...

For all its rapid economic and military growth, China may have a crucial weakness in its grossly underfunded retirement system for the largest national population on earth. Currently, the implicit pension debt in China is around $1.5 trillion, a liability that primarily rests on the country's 31...

Although elderly men and women share many of the same problems as they age, their lives are likely to follow different courses. Women are more likely than men to live into old old-age and are more likely to spend part of their young old-age caring for husbands or parents. By providing this...

Much of the existing literature on social security has taken the extreme assumption that individuals have little or no altruism; this paper takes an opposite assumption that there is full two-sided altruism. When households insure members that belong to the same family line, privatizing social...

This report summarises the research we have undertaken into the implications of various pension reform strategies in Japan. Reform is essential because ageing will generate extreme pressures on the public, unfunded pension system. We consider the macroeconomic, or aggregate, and the...