U.S. policy changes and more optimistic fiscal forecasts have significantly improved the long-term fiscal prospects of the country. Nevertheless, these prospects remain dismal. Unless U.S. fiscal policy changes by a lot and very soon, our descendants will face rates of lifetime net taxation that...

This paper uses ESPlannerTM -- a life-cycle, financial planning model -- to investigate the potential impact of alternative fiscal policies on current consumption and saving. Studies to date have examined the response of current consumption to tax-induced temporary and permanent income changes....

Hostile takeovers may reduce the prevalence of long-term employment contracts if they facilitate the opportunistic expropriation of extramarginal wage payments. Our tests of two versions of the expropriation hypothesis improve on existing research by using firm- and establishment-level data from...

Does it pay to work? Given the number and complexity of federal and state tax and transfer systems, this is a tough question to answer. The problem is greatly compounded by the fact that what one earns in one year alters not just current taxes and transfer payments in that year, but in future...

Since 1980, the U.S. net national saving rate has averaged less than half the rate observed in the 1950s and 60s. This paper develops a unique cohort data set to study the decline in U.S. national saving. It decomposes postwar changes in U.S. saving into those due to changes in cohort-specific...

The U.S. Social Security system has helped keep many retirees out of poverty. However, according to the Social Security and Medicare Trustees, Social Security faces a future financial shortfall of $10.4 trillion in present value. This enormous imbalance has received little attention in public...

As currently legislated, the U.S. Social Security System represents a bad deal for postwar Americans. Of every dollar postwar Americans have earned or will earn over their lifetimes, over 5 cents will be lost to the Old Age Survivor Insurance System (OASI) in the form of payroll taxes paid in...

This paper marshals a variety of different types of evidence in considering the degree of equity in the government's treatment of children vis-a-vis adults, particularly the current elderly. The paper begins by showing that poverty rates of children have, over the past two decades, risen...

Our previous study (Auerbach, Gokhale and Kotlikoff 1991) introduced the concept of generational accounting, a method of determining how the burden of fiscal policy falls on different generations. it found that fiscal policy in the U.S. is out of balance, in terms of projected generational...

This paper presents a set of generational accounts (GAS) that can be used to assess the fiscal burden current generations are placing on future generations. The GAS indicate the net present value amount that current and future generations are projected to pay to the government now and in the...