As the U.S. population ages, a growing ratio of retirees to workers increases the burden of pay-as-you-go retirement systems. It is efficient to maintain a defined-benefit social security system? Should PAYGO benefits be reduced and private retirement savings be encoraged? To answer such policy...

Yes, subject to concerns about Medicare cost and potentially self-confirming skepticism. The US social security system (broadly defined, including Medicare) faces significant financial problems as the result of an aging population. But demographic change is also likely to raise savings, increase...

The paper examines the welfare effects of alternative government policies on the allocation of aggregate risks across generations. The paper develops a method for evaluating the welfare effects of marginal policy changes in an OG setting. The main application is the question of social security...

An overlapping generations model of social security with labor and capital productivity shocks and demographic shocks is studied.

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), administered by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, is a longitudinal survey of the population of U.S. households with at least one adult between the ages of 51 and 61 in 1992 (individuals born between 1931 and 1941). In...

This paper examines whether the Turkish pay-as-you-go Social Security System is in need of reform. In an attempt to shed a light on the future sustainability of the pay-as-you-go social security system in Turkey, the paper examines the demographic and financial pressures on social security and...

Returns to Social Security's Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program vary accross socioeconomic groups because of progressivity in the benefit formula, spousal and widowhood provisions, differential mortality rates, and other factors. This paper computes the rate of return to OASI...

In this paper, we conduct a U.S.- Japan comparison of the importance of retirement saving and of the determinants thereof using micro data from the "U.S.- Japan Comparison Survey of Saving," a binational household survey conducted in 1996 by the Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy...

This study considers those wage earners who are covered by a social security program as part of the formal sector and those wage earners who are not covered by any social security program as part of the informal sector. Using 1994 Household Expenditure Survey I first examine how individuals are...

The changes that are taking place in the structure of the population of many Western countries are likely to require considerable adjustments in their social security programs. A partial shift from pay-as-you-go (PAYG) to funding is one of the solutions frequently considered. This paper, without...