The absence of individual level data linking earnings histories to the receipt of Medicare benefits has hampered the study of the program's distributional properties. Data developed by the Social Security Administration for an early cohort of Medicare beneficiaries includes both earnings records...

Medicare is America’s second largest entitlement program and this year will account for 14 percent of the Federal budget, 3.2 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is growing rapidly so that by the end of the Medicare Trustees 75-year projection period, 2080, the Medicare...