Declining fertility, mortality, and productivity rates in developed countries and the popularity of the social security privatization in Chile as a pathway to financial development have sparked a global interest in social security reform. This paper analyzes the effect of social security on...

If the United States switched to a broad-based consumption tax, then all forms of saving would enjoy the tax-preferred status reserved primarily for retirement saving vehicles under the current income tax system. Because pensions have other unique characteristics besides their tax advantage,...

The Two Percent Plan (TTP) is a plan to save Social Security based on personal retirement accounts financed initially out of the budget surplus; this article discusses issues regarding problems the TTP can address and a way the TTP can be efficiently implemented.

Shows how current social security benefit rules have created a variety of social security net marginal tax rates that differ by age, sex, marital status and income in ways that reduse the equity and efficiency of the social security program.

We estimate how much of the wealth of a sample of respondents to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is held because some households face more income uncertainty than others. We begin by solving a theoretical model of saving, which we use to develop appropriate measures of uncertainty. We then...