This paper shows that improved intergenerational risk sharing in social security may imply very large welfare gains, amounting to up to 15 percent of the per-period consumption relative to the current U.S. consumption. Improved risk sharing raises welfare through a direct effect, i.e., by...

This paper discusses five examples of the conventional wisdom that has often been expressed in the social security debate, even among academic economists. These are: 1. The major problem in most social security systems is that of demography: people simply live too long. 2. Disregarding the issue...

In order to get a more complete picture of how labor supply is affected by economic incentives, the effects on absenteeism and not just on contracted hours should be taken into account. In particular, absenteeism due to sick leave can be considerable. In this paper we examine whether the level...

In this paper we estimate equations for deserving or "true disability indicator" and receiv- ing disability benefits to evaluate the award error as the difference between both probabilities using survey data from Spain. As expected award errors are not randomly distributed across the population....

This paper develops a growth model with overlapping generations of workers who save for life-cycle reasons and Ricardian capitalists who save from a bequest motive. The population of workers accommodates growth,so that the rate of capital accumulation is endogenous and determines the growth of...

This paper argues that social security enjoys wider political support than other welfare programs because: (i) retirees constitute the most homogeneous voting group, and (ii) the intragenerational redistribution component of social security induces low-income young to support this system.

We use reforms in the Swiss public retirement system to identify the responsiveness of retirement timing to financial incentives. A permanent reduction of retirement benefits by 3.4 percent induces more than 70 percent of females to postpone their retirement. The responsiveness of male workers,...

For most older people in the United States, Social Security is the major source of income: nine out of ten people age 65 or older receive benefits, which represent an average of 41 percent of their income. Largely as a result of Social Security, poverty rates for the elderly are at an all-time...

We provide evidence on the policy risk of social security in Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia by computing the changes in the social security wealth induced by the pension reforms undertaken since the 1990s. Methodologically we follow upon McHale’s (2001) study of selected reforms in G7...

This presentation reviews recent social security reforms in Asia-Pacific, with emphasis on countries with major reliance on social insurance schemes. Japan, Korea, Philippines, China, Vietnam, and Thailand have accepted social insurance principle as basic framework for social security. There is...