Almost fifty years ago in 1965, on the steps of the State Capital in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked a crowd of twenty-five thousand "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" The...

Welfare States do not insure citizens against the risk of premature death, i.e., the risk of having a short life. Using a dynamic OLG model with risky lifetime, this paper compares two insurance devices reducing well-being volatility due to the risk of early death: (i) an ante-mortem age-based...

In this paper we investigate the impact of a reduction in the pension replacement rate on the schooling choice and on inequality. We develop an overlapping generations model in which individuals differ by their life expectancy and in the cost of attending schooling. Individuals optimally choose...

We assess the concentration and duration of zero tax liabilities and of transfer receipts, using data for households with ten to forty years of observations from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. We find that neither is strongly concentrated. Nearly 68% owe no federal tax in at least one...