We examine whether the aging of the U.S. population adds force to traditional arguments for boosting national saving and conclude--perhaps surprisingly--that it may not. Aging boosts the demands on future resources, but it also changes the rate of return the U.S. economy can expect from saving....

This paper discusses the report of the 1994 Quadrennial Advisory Council on Social Security, of which the author was chair. The system is out of long-term actuarial balance and, as a maturing defined benefit pay-as-you-go system, is giving younger cohorts ever lower returns on their payroll...

There is a worldwide trend toward defined contribution saving plans and growing interest in privatized Social Security plans. In both environments, individuals are given some responsibility to make their own asset-allocation decisions, raising concerns about how well they do at this task. This...

There is a widespread consensus in the literature that, as consequence of the demographic transition, the current Spanish pension system will become unsustainable in the next decades. In this article we evaluate the sustainability of the contributory pensions' sub-system, taking into account the...

Using data on historical returns on international financial assets, the paper simulates pension fund and pension replacement ratios, building up frequency distributions of these ratios for individuals saving in a defined contribution pension plan in different countries. These frequency...

We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus...