Section I reviews some of the important contributions using time series evidence to estimate Social Security’s impact on private savings. Essential to these studies is the use of a “Social Security Wealth” (SSW) variable, created by Martin Feldstein (1974), which defines the present value...

Benefit reductions will likely be a part of the eventual Social Security reform in the United States. This research attempts to quantify the intragenerational and intergenerational impacts of different benefit reduction proposals on the incomes of the elderly. Reforms include across-the-board...

An understanding of the financial and distributional consequences of Social Security reform requires knowledge about the actual life circumstances of participants, including the level and pattern of their lifetime earnings and when they retire. Some analyses of Social Security reform make...