Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This paper shows that the "progressive" Social Security benefit cuts endorsed by President Bush in April 2005 would actually hit middle-income workers hardest.
The Regressive Impact of the Progressive Indexation of Social Security Benefits
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This paper shows that the "progressive" Social Security benefit cuts endorsed by President Bush in April 2005 would actually hit middle-income workers hardest.
The Progressivity of Social Security
Author: Julia Lynn CoronadoPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income distribution
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Book Description
How much does the current social security system really redistribute from rich to poor? We use the PSID to estimate lifetime wage profiles and actual earnings each year for a sample of 1778 individuals, and we use mortality probabilities to calculate expected payroll taxes and social security benefits. For a given set of facts' about the net flows received by each individual, measured progressivity depends on many assumptions. This paper attempts to capture and to quantify all of the individual characteristics that are relevant to determine the progressivity of a life-cycle program like social security. We proceed in seven steps. First, we classify individuals by annual income and use Gini coefficients to find that social security is highly progressive. Second, we reclassify individuals on the basis of lifetime income and find that social security is less progressive. Third, we remove the cap on measured earnings and find that social security is even less progressive. Fourth, we switch from actual to potential lifetime earnings (the present value of the wage rate times 4000 hours each year). This measure captures the value of leisure and home production, so those out of the labor force are less poor, and net payments to them are less progressive. Fifth, we assign to each married individual half of the couple's income. The low-wage spouse is then not so poor less progressive. Sixth, we incorporate mortality probabilities that differ by potential lifetime income. Since the rich live longer and collect benefits longer, social security is no longer progressive. Finally, we increase the discount rate from 2% to 4%, which puts relatively more weight on the earlier-but-regressive payroll tax and less weight on the later-but-progressive benefit schedule. The whole social security system is then regressive.
Report of the National Commission on Social Security Reform
Author: United States. National Commission on Social Security ReformPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Disability insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Privatizing Social Security
Author: Martin FeldsteinPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226241823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest
The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and MedicinePublisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030931710X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
The U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.
The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform
Author: Martin FeldsteinPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226241890
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481
Book Description
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 from reductions in future benefits to a rise in taxrevenue to various forms of investment-based personal retirement accounts. As this volume suggests, the distributional consequences of these proposals are substantially different and may disproportionately affect those groups who depend on social security to avoid poverty in old age. Together, these studies persuasively show that appropriately designed investment-based social security reforms can effectively reduce the long-term burden of an aging society on future taxpayers, increase the expected future income of retirees, and mitigate poverty rates among the elderly.
The Distributional Implications of the Impact of Fuel Price Increases on Inflation
Author: Mr. Kangni R KpodarPublisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1616356154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
This paper investigates the response of consumer price inflation to changes in domestic fuel prices, looking at the different categories of the overall consumer price index (CPI). We then combine household survey data with the CPI components to construct a CPI index for the poorest and richest income quintiles with the view to assess the distributional impact of the pass-through. To undertake this analysis, the paper provides an update to the Global Monthly Retail Fuel Price Database, expanding the product coverage to premium and regular fuels, the time dimension to December 2020, and the sample to 190 countries. Three key findings stand out. First, the response of inflation to gasoline price shocks is smaller, but more persistent and broad-based in developing economies than in advanced economies. Second, we show that past studies using crude oil prices instead of retail fuel prices to estimate the pass-through to inflation significantly underestimate it. Third, while the purchasing power of all households declines as fuel prices increase, the distributional impact is progressive. But the progressivity phases out within 6 months after the shock in advanced economies, whereas it persists beyond a year in developing countries.
Shifting the Color Line
Author: Robert C. LiebermanPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Shifting the Color Line explores the historical and political roots of racial conflict in American welfare policy, beginning with the New Deal. Robert Lieberman demonstrates how racial distinctions were built into the very structure of the American welfare state.
Retooling Social Security for the 21st Century
Author: C. Eugene SteuerlePublisher: The Urban Insitute
ISBN: 9780877666028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Study of the Social Security debate arguing that Social Security needs reform and offering a blueprint for implementing them to meet today's and tomorrow's needs.
Social Security in the United States
Author: Paul H. DouglasPublisher: Beard Books
ISBN: 9781587980558
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description