Social security is the largest and perhaps the most popular program run by the federal government. Given the projected increase in both individual life expectancy and sheer number of retirees, however, the current system faces an eventual overload. Alternative proposals have emerged, ranging...

A reform of a pay-as-you-go social security makes the pensioners worse off and the working generations better off in the period of the reform (in a dynamically efficient economy without altruism). The observed reluctance across all age groups to support such reforms is usually explained by the...

We analyze the political stability of welfare enhancing privatization of the social security. We consider an economy populated by overlapping generations, who vote on abolishing the funded system and replacing it with the pay-as-you-go scheme, i.e. "unprivatizing" the pension system. We show...

The national debate over Social Security reform remains centered on the distributive structure the program. Individual-level support or opposition for privatization can be viewed as a choice between an uncertain outcome in which market forces determine the value of one's future benefit, and a...

Increasing longevity causes an upward trend in the dependency ratio in many countries. This raises concerns about the financial sustainability of social security schemes, and reform initiatives and proposals abound. It is shown that a fundamental policy choice inevitably arises since a given...