This paper examines how the issue of political support affects the design of social insurance. It distinguishes between redistributive character and size of social protection. Three main results emerge. First, it may be appropriate to adopt a system which is less redistributive than otherwise...

This paper studies the role of social insurance as a redistributive mechanism in the presence of an optimal (linear or general) income tax. It considers a second-best setting with two unobservable individual characteristics: ability, measured by the wage rate, and risk, measured by the...