Proposals to Restructure Social Security

This paper discusses five proposed changes in Social Security: indexing the normal retirement age to life expectancy (as Sweden is doing); investing part of the trust funds in private securities; partial privatization (as has been proposed by Senators Kerrey and Simpson, Sweden is doing and Mexico has done); replacing Social Security by individually mandated savings (as was done in Chile in 1981); and mandating employer provided retirement savings (as recently legislated in Australia and is effectively the case in some European countries.) The economics of Social Security and the politics of restoring (and preserving) actuarial balance are discussed.