IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v32y2004i6p588-609.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incorporating Insurance Rate Estimates and Differential Mortality into the Net Marginal Social Security Tax Rate Calculation

Author

Listed:
  • Brian S. Armour

    (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

  • M. Melinda Pitts

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)

Abstract

This study extends the literature on net marginal tax rates created by the Social Security program by including variations in both the probability of being eligible to receive benefits and earnings-related life expectancy. Previous literature has found that women incur a lower net marginal tax rate because they have longer life expectancies. The results in this article indicate that including variations in eligibility for benefits partially reverses this result by increasing net marginal Social Security tax rates for older women. Furthermore, the existing literature has shown that low-earnings households pay lower net marginal tax rates because the benefit formula is progressive. Including variations in life expectancy reduces but does not eliminate this result. This implies that differential mortality increases the net marginal Social Security tax rates incurred by low-earnings households. These results are important from a policy standpoint, given the current debate on the future of the Social Security system.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian S. Armour & M. Melinda Pitts, 2004. "Incorporating Insurance Rate Estimates and Differential Mortality into the Net Marginal Social Security Tax Rate Calculation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(6), pages 588-609, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:32:y:2004:i:6:p:588-609
    DOI: 10.1177/1091142104266970
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142104266970
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1091142104266970?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garrett, Daniel M, 1995. "The Effects of Differential Mortality Rates on the Progressivity of Social Security," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(3), pages 457-475, July.
    2. Richard V. Burkhauser & John A. Turner, 1985. "Is the Social Security Payroll Tax a Tax?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 13(3), pages 253-267, July.
    3. Harriet Duleep, 1989. "Measuring socioeconomic mortality differentials over time," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(2), pages 345-351, May.
    4. Feldstein, Martin & Samwick, Andrew A., 1992. "Social Security Rules and Marginal Tax Rates," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 45(1), pages 1-22, March.
    5. Henry J. Aaron, 1977. "Demographic Effects on the Equity of Social Security Benefits," International Economic Association Series, in: Martin S. Feldstein & Robert P. Inman (ed.), The Economics of Public Services, chapter 7, pages 151-173, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Edgar K. Browning, 1985. "The Marginal Social Security Tax on Labor," Public Finance Review, , vol. 13(3), pages 227-251, July.
    7. Brittain, John A, 1972. "The Incidence of the Social Security Payroll Tax: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 739-742, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brian S. Armour & M. Melinda Pitts, 2007. "Smoking: taxing health and Social Security," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 92(Q 3), pages 27-41.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brian S. Armour & M. Melinda Pitts, 2007. "Smoking: taxing health and Social Security," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 92(Q 3), pages 27-41.
    2. Brian S. Armour & M. Melinda Pitts, 2002. "Incorporating insurance rate estimates and differential mortality into net marginal Social Security tax rate calculations," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2002-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    3. Andrew Mitrusi & James Poterba, 2000. "The Distribution of Payroll and Income Tax Burdens, 1979-1999," NBER Working Papers 7707, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Gahvari, Firouz & Beach, Randy, 2016. "On the optimal linkage of social security benefits to payroll taxes," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 110-121.
    5. Feldstein, Martin & Samwick, Andrew A., 1992. "Social Security Rules and Marginal Tax Rates," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 45(1), pages 1-22, March.
    6. Liebman, Jeffrey B. & Luttmer, Erzo F.P. & Seif, David G., 2009. "Labor supply responses to marginal Social Security benefits: Evidence from discontinuities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1208-1223, December.
    7. Parry, Ian, 2000. "Comparing the Marginal Excess Burden of Labor, Gasoline, Cigarette and Alcohol Taxes: An Application to the United Kingdom," RFF Working Paper Series dp-00-33-rev, Resources for the Future.
    8. Stephenson, E. Frank, 1998. "Average marginal tax rates revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 389-409, April.
    9. Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B., 2002. "Social security," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 32, pages 2245-2324, Elsevier.
    10. John Geanakoplos & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2009. "Reforming Social Security with Progressive Personal Accounts," NBER Chapters, in: Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment, pages 73-121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Kevin Lang, 2020. "Effort and wages: Evidence from the payroll tax," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 108-139, February.
    12. Samwick, Andrew A., 1999. "Social Security Reform in the United States," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 4), pages 819-42, December.
    13. Colas, Mark & Sachs, Dominik, 2022. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 352, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    14. Casey B. Mulligan, 2013. "Recent Marginal Labor Income Tax Rate Changes by Skill and Marital Status," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 69-100.
    15. Parry, Ian, 2001. "How Should Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Finance Its Transportation Deficit?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-12, Resources for the Future.
    16. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "A Century of Labor-Leisure Distortions," NBER Working Papers 8774, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Peter Diamond, 1998. "The Economics of Social Security Reform," NBER Working Papers 6719, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Walter Fisher & Christian Keuschnigg, 2010. "Pension reform and labor market incentives," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 769-803, March.
    19. LaLumia, Sara, 2009. "The Earned Income Tax Credit and Reported Self-Employment Income," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(2), pages 191-217, June.
    20. Frédéric Gannon & Vincent Touzé, 2013. "Pension rules and implicit marginal tax rate in France," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-02093467, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:32:y:2004:i:6:p:588-609. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.