Is Altruism Important for Understanding the Long-Run Effects of Social Security?

This paper quantifies the effects of social security on capital accumulation and wealth distribution in a life-cycle framework with altruistic individuals. The main findings of this paper are that the current U.S. social security system has a significant impact on capital accumulation and wealth distribution. I find that social security crowds out 8% of the capital stock of an economy without social security. This effect is driven by the distortions of labor supply due to the taxation of labor income rather than by the intergenerational redistribution of income imposed by the social security system. In contrast to previous analysis, I found that social security does not affect the savings rate of the economy. Another interesting finding is that even though the current U.S. social security system is progressive in its benefits, it may lead to a more dispersed distribution of wealth. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D31, D58, E2, E6, H55, J22, J26.     

Social security,saving, and macroeconomics

Arguing within the framework of a life-cycle hypothesis of consumption of the individual household, Martin Feldstein has claimed that a pay-as-you-go, unfunded social-security system implies a private-sector perception of wealth which both depresses private saving and raises aggregate consumption. But the effects in a macro-economic context are not the same. With less than full employment, perceived increments to private wealth in social security or any other government obligations should increase current and planned future consumption and saving, raising employment and output. With full employment, as long as monetary policy is appropriately accommodating, such increments to wealth should raise prices but leave all real variables, including capital accumulation, unaffected. Increases in social-security wealth would merely substitute for real private wealth in the form of explicit government bonds. Econometric estimates from corrected U.S. data on social security, public debt, income, and employment are consistent with these hypotheses.     

Welfare implications of net social security wealth

Real net social wealth (NSSW), the real present value of social security benefits received minus social security taxes paid, is frequently used as a direct proxy measure for the impact of a social security system on generation welfare. The present paper establishes to the contrary, for a class of overlapping generation economies, that NSSW can be simultaneously negatively correlated with welfare for every agent in every generation. More generally, the paper determines the extent to which social security is needed in these economies to ensure social optimality, and investigates the proper subset of economies for which NSSW and generation welfare exhibit positive correlation.     

基于公平和效率的角度 分析社会保障模式的选择

公平和效率都是社会保障追求的目标。社会保障制度的设计是在尽量不扭曲资源配置的基础上,通过收入和财富的再分配达到当前社会核心价值体系下定义的公平,因此如何实现公平和效率均衡是社会保障模式的重点,本文总结了世界各国的几种典型的社会保障模式,并从公平和效率的角度对这几种模式进行评价,进而对我国社会保障模式的选择提出几点建议。     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOTAL WEALTH IN ITALY: 1991–2002

We estimate an "augmented" measure of wealth incorporating social security wealth for the first time in Italy, and examine the composition and distribution of such augmented wealth among Italian households during the period 1991–2002. The path followed by augmented wealth from 1991 to 2002 is determined by two opposing forces: namely an increase in net worth and a decline in social security wealth, which appears to be much more pronounced in the first part of the period. Wealth inequality, after rising steeply at the beginning of the 1990s, leveled off during the second part of the period in question. The major contribution toward this upwards movement came from social security wealth, the distribution of which, although less unequal than that of real wealth and financial wealth, widened at a much faster pace at the beginning of the decade.     

Social Security Reform with Heterogeneous Agents

This paper analyzes the quantitative role of idiosyncratic uncertainty in an economy in which rational agents vote on hypothetical social security reforms. We find that the role of a pay-as-you-go social security system as a partial insurance and redistribution device significantly reduces political support for a transition to an economy with a fully funded system. We conclude that the status quo bias in favor of an unfunded social security system is stronger in economies in which agents of similar age differ significantly with respect to labor earnings and wealth because of idiosyncratic income uncertainty. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: H55, E62, H3     

Estimating the equilibrium real exchange rate: the case of Turkey

This article is the first attempt in the literature to investigate the effects of public social security on aggregate consumption in a time-series setting for a developing country, Turkey that has one of the most generous social security systems in the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) region. In order to quantify the social security variable, this article uses the social security wealth (SSW) series calculated for Turkey in a separate study. This study indicates that SSW is the largest part of the household wealth in Turkey, and therefore should not be ignored in the aggregate consumption studies. The results show that its effect on consumption is positive and robust.     

On pension liabilities in Italy

We discuss alternative definitions of pension liabilities and provide estimates for Italy under two of these definitions; the effects on such variables of the 1992 pension reform are considered. We also build and comment on a regional disaggregation of social security wealth (SSW): in particular we find some evidence suggesting that, as a whole, the Italian pension system has reduced the concentration of wealth among regions; if old age pensions alone are considered, this result is reversed.     

The dynamics of inequality and social security in general equilibrium

This paper analyzes the dynamic politico-economic equilibrium of a model where repeated voting on social security and the evolution of household characteristics in general equilibrium are mutually affected over time. In particular, we incorporate within-cohort heterogeneity in a two-period Overlapping-Generation model to capture the intra-generational redistributive effect of social security transfers. Political decision-making is represented by a probabilistic voting à la Lindbeck and Weibull (1987). We analytically characterize the Markov perfect equilibrium, in which social security tax rates are shown to be increasing in wealth inequality. A dynamic interaction between inequality and social security leads to larger social security programs. In a model calibrated to the U.S. economy, the dynamic interaction is shown to be quantitatively important: It accounts for more than half of the social security growth in the dynamics. We also perform some normative analysis, showing that the politico-economic equilibrium outcomes can be fundamentally different from the Ramsey allocation.     

不同养老保障机制与家庭储蓄率——基于世代交叠模型的实证研究

目前,我国的养老保障机制采用以社会养老保险为基础的多渠道养老保险机制,家庭成员赡养、个人金融投资和养老保险就成为了三种主要方式。这一结论已经得到了学术界的广泛认可,然而我国不同养老渠道之间的比例和关系尚缺乏实证研究。家庭自主的金融资产投资、家庭成员之间的赡养效果还没有得到充分的检验。文章基于2008年和2009年的中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据,首次运用2005年政策调整后的数据进行实证研究,对我国养老金财富、个人金融投资以及家庭成员赡养率之间的关系进行了分析研究。文章根据传统的世代交叠模型,针对现有数据,建立了一个三期世代交叠模型,然后分析了不同渠道养老保险收入对家庭储蓄率的影响。研究结果表明,基本养老金财富与个人金融投资对非退休人群的储蓄有显著的负向影响,退休者的储蓄率主要受家庭成员赡养影响,并且呈负相关的关系。     

Postponing retirement: the political effect of aging

Conventional economic wisdom suggests that because of the aging process, social security systems will have to be retrenched. In particular, retirement age will have to be largely increased. Yet, is this policy measure feasible in OECD countries? Since the answer belongs mainly to the realm of politics, I evaluate the political feasibility of postponing retirement under aging in France, Italy, the UK, and the US. Simulations for the year 2050 steady state demographic, economic and political scenario suggest that retirement age will be postponed in all countries, while the social security contribution rate will rise in all countries, but Italy. The political support for increasing the retirement age stems mainly from the negative income effect induced by aging, which reduces the profitability of the existing social security system, and thus the individuals' net social security wealth.     

WEALTH ACCUMULATION OF CANADIAN AND FOREIGN-BORN HOUSEHOLDS IN CANADA

This study focuses on the role of foreign-born households in Canada's asset market. An empirical analysis of wealth accumulation is conducted for a large sample of Canadian households circa 1977–84. This study period reflects a change in Canada's immigration policy which resulted in immigration Rows switching from Europe to Asia. A life-cycle framework is used to examine wealth accumulation behaviour of the foreign-born vis-à-vis Canadian-born households. The empirical results confirm the existence of an inverted 'U'-shaped wealth-age profile for both Canadian and immigrant households. However, the 1977 results show that the rate of wealth accumulation is higher for the immigrant household than the Canadian-born household in pre-retirement years, while the 1984 results reveal the opposite. After retirement, the rate of wealth dissipation is slower for Canadians than for foreign-born households. Only the 1984 results indicate that public social security wealth displaces household savings for both the Canadian-born and the foreign-born by a small amount. Finally, an immigrant household exhibits a stronger transfer motive within a family than a Canadian-born household regardless of year tested.     

ANNUITIZED ASSET ADEQUACY IN JAPAN: THE DEMAND FOR INDIVIDUAL PENSIONS

In this paper, I analyze the impact of social security wealth, retirement payments, and living expenses during retirement on people's retirement savings in general, and on their individual pension holdings in particular, using micro data from a 1996 Japanese household survey. I confirm a replacement effect of social security on saving for all types of households and on individual pensions for self‐employed households only. This suggests that the social security assets of self‐employed households are less than their optimal level of annuitized assets and that they would increase their demand for individual pensions if social security benefits were to be reduced.     

Demography and welfare economics

The focusing on demographic issues as an important part of welfare-economic assessment shifts the evaluative space in the direction of public discussion and social concern. A commoditycentred view of individual success and social welfare is often used in economics. But the linkage between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like has strong limits. This is partly because of interpersonal variations between individuals, but also because of variations in public and social arrangements (for example, for public health care, education and social security). The use of demographic perspectives can enrich economic analysis in several ways. In particular a demographically oriented system of evaluation can not only focus on variables that we all value, but it also gives us the freedom to decide what weights would be most appropriate for the exercise in which we might be engaged. The problem of valuation in welfare economics is ultimately a social-choice issue, requiring the use of explicit judgments on which the society can achieve some consensus through political processes.Lecture presented to the annual meeting of the Austrian Economic Association in Vienna, 24 May 1994. The author is grateful for support from the National Science Foundation for the research on which this paper draws.     

Secular Changes in Wealth Inequality and Inheritance

Data suggest that the distribution of wealth among households in the USA and UK has become more equal over the last century, though, at least for the USA, the pattern may have reversed recently. This paper shows that a model in which all households save for life-cycle reasons and some for dynastic purposes as well offers a possible or partial explanation: the model predicts rising cross-sectional equality of wealth when longevity increases. There may also be implications about very recent changes: expansion of social security programmes and government deficits can lead toward more wealth inequality. Slower growth may do the same.     

Savings and pensions in The Netherlands

We describe the distribution of private wealth of Dutch households over the life cycle and relate this to the size of individual entitlements to pay-as-you-go social security benefits and funded pension benefits. We also investigate saving motives and find that saving for old age plays only a minor role. Precautionary motives play some role, but in view of the very extensive social safety net it does not seem likely that precaution is an important factor in saving decisions. Altogether, the data are consistent with the view that an extensive social safety net and generous old age income provisions reduce the need to accumulate private wealth.     

Social security and retirement incentives in Austria

This paper provides an overview of the interaction between social security and retirement behavior in Austria in the decades up to the on-going reform process. The key question is, how much of the retirement behavior can be attributed to incentive effects of the pension system. We describe the labor market and retirement behavior of the elderly in Austria, survey the key features of the public pension system and finally present the results of a series of simulations aimed at assessing the retirement incentives generated by the pension system. We compute levels and accrual rates of social security wealth and implicit tax rates on continued work according to the method portrayed in Gruber and Wise [Gruber J, Wise D (1999) Social security and retirement around the world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago London]. To some extent, the sharp drop in labor force participation among the elderly must be attributed to major disincentives of the Austrian pension system; the system turns out to provide significant incentives to retire early. Past reforms have reduced the disincentives. Our results, however, show the need to further reform the public pension scheme and to reorient it stronger towards the principle of actuarial fairness.     

社会保障筹资模式的路径选择——基于筹资模式的储蓄效应研究

随着人口老龄化的加剧,许多实行现收现付制社会保障制度的国家财政负担越来越重,为了保证社会保障制度的可持续性,各国开始寻求新的社会保障筹资模式。在世界银行主推的基金制社会保障制度浪潮下,二十世纪90年代开始,中国结合本国实际情况也开始了社会保障制度的改革,并于1997年开始实施社会保险基金的＂部分基金制＂,即现收现付制与完全基金制相结合的筹资模式。本文阐述了现收现付制和基金制的运行机理并探讨了其与储蓄的关系,并在此基础上,对我国的部分基金制进行解析。本文认为部分基金制的＂个人账户＂的储蓄功能目前无法得到实际发挥,由于我国目前的经济条件和收入差距悬殊等问题,使得部分基金制向完全基金制的转变应循序渐进,现收现付方式还应是我国目前实行的部分基金制中的侧重部分。     

增长失衡与政府责任——基于社会性支出角度的分析

当前中国的发展出现了以国富与民生关系失衡为本质特征的增长失衡。本文从教育、医疗和社会保障等与民生有关的政府责任切入,指出当前中国与民生状况直接相关的政府社会性支出的不足,是导致增长失衡的重要原因。为此,政府应在提供教育、医疗和社会保障等方面承担起基本的责任,加快财政支出结构转型,增加社会性支出的比重,改善民生状况,纠正增长失衡;并通过社会性支出的增加,促进人力资本积累,推动增长路径的转变,实现经济长期健康发展。     

Social security and unsecured debt

In this paper, we use a calibrated life-cycle model to explore quantitatively ways of reducing the burden of social security in a world populated by both optimizing and rule-of-thumb consumers. Social security contributions force young households with upward-sloping income profiles to save a sizeable portion of their income for retirement, when their optimal consumption plan would likely have them either saving little or borrowing. We first use household data to document that young households have accumulated social security contributions that are large relative to debt holdings. Then, using a calibrated life-cycle model, we show that both allowing households to use social security wealth to pay off their debt and exempting young households from social security contributions (but in both cases requiring higher contributions later) mitigate many of the inefficiencies of social security from the perspective of life-cycle financial planning. Specifically, in our preferred experiment, which exempts households whose heads are under 30 from making social security contributions, we find that certainty-equivalent consumption increases by 3.4% for optimizing households and by 3.3% for rule-of-thumb households.