This is the introduction and summary to the fourth phase of an ongoing project on Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. The first phase described the retirement incentives inherent in plan provisions and documented the strong relationship across countries between social...

Government backed income contingent student loans are an increasingly being used to fund higher education. An income contingent repayment plan acts as an incremental marginal tax on labor earnings, which could cause individuals to distort their work effort. This paper uses an administrative...

While National Health Insurance (NHI) plans in the U.S. are often opposed on the basis of their potential disemployment effects, there is no existing evidence on the effects of NHI on employment. We provide such evidence by examining the employment consequences of NHI in Canada, using the fact...

We consider the role of spousal labor supply as insurance against spells of unemployment. Standard theory suggests that women should work more when their husbands are out of work (the Added Worker Effect or AWE), but there has been little empirical support for this contention. We too find little...

The Social Security earnings test, a version of which still applies to those ages 62-64, reduces immediate payments to beneficiaries whose labor income exceeds a given threshold. Although benefits are subsequently increased to compensate for any such reduction, the earnings test is typically...

This paper provides a critical review of the empirical literature on the relationship between health insurance, labor supply, and job mobility. We review over 50 papers on this topic, almost exclusively written in the last 10 years. We reach five conclusions. First, there is clear and...