IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/issbrf/ib-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Would Financial Risk Affect Retirement Income Under Individual Accounts?

Author

Listed:
  • Gary Burtless

Abstract

A popular proposal for reforming Social Security is to supplement or replace traditional publicly financed benefits with a new system of mandatory, defined contribution private pensions. Proponents claim that private plans offer better returns than traditional Social Security. To achieve higher returns, however, contributors are exposed to extra risks associated with financial market fluctuations. This issue in brief offers evidence on the extent of these risks by considering the hypothetical pensions U.S. workers would have obtained during the past century if they had accumulated retirement savings in individual accounts.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary Burtless, 2000. "How Would Financial Risk Affect Retirement Income Under Individual Accounts?," Issues in Brief ib-5, Center for Retirement Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-would-financial-risk-affect-retirement-income-under-individual-accounts/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Geanakoplos & Olivia S. Mitchell & Stephen P. Zeldes, "undated". "Would a Privatized Social Security System Really Pay a Higher Rate of Return?," Pension Research Council Working Papers 98-6, Wharton School Pension Research Council, University of Pennsylvania.
    2. Gary Burtless, 2000. "Social Security Privatization and Financial Market Risk: Lessons from U.S. Financial History," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 211, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    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. Alicia H. Munnell & Alex Golub-Sass & Richard W. Kopcke & Anthony Webb, 2009. "What Does It Cost To Guarantee Returns?," Issues in Brief ib2009-9-4, Center for Retirement Research, revised Feb 2009.
    2. Alicia H. Munnell & Anthony Webb & Alex Golub-Sass, 2008. "How Much Risk is Acceptable?," Issues in Brief ib2008-8-20, Center for Retirement Research, revised Nov 2008.
    3. Purvi Sevak, 2002. "Wealth Shocks and Retirement Timing: Evidence from the Nineties," Working Papers wp027, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    4. Thomas L. Hungerford, 2003. "U.S. Workers' Investment Decisions for Participant-Directed Defined Contribution Pension Assets," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_375, Levy Economics Institute.

    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. Assar Lindbeck & Mats Persson, 2003. "The Gains from Pension Reform," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 74-112, March.
    2. 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.
    3. Carlos Vidal-Meliá & Mar𨁤el Carmen Boado-Penas, 2013. "Compiling the actuarial balance for pay-as-you-go pension systems. Is it better to use the hidden asset or the contribution asset?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(10), pages 1303-1320, April.
    4. Willem H. Buiter, 2003. "James Tobin: An Appreciation of his Contribution to Economics," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(491), pages 585-631, November.
    5. Dirk Krueger & Felix Kubler, 2006. "Pareto-Improving Social Security Reform when Financial Markets are Incomplete!?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 737-755, June.
    6. Elder, Erick & Holland, Larry, 2000. "Social Security reform: the effect of investing in equities," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 93-106, 00.
    7. Gollier, Christian, 2008. "Intergenerational risk-sharing and risk-taking of a pension fund," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1463-1485, June.
    8. Alonso-García, J. & Devolder, P., 2016. "Optimal mix between pay-as-you-go and funding for DC pension schemes in an overlapping generations model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 224-236.
    9. Wade D. Pfau & Vararat Atisophon, 2009. "Impact of the National Pension Fund on the Suitability of Elderly Pensions in Thailand," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 41-63, March.
    10. Arza, Camila, 2008. "The Limits of Pension Privatization: Lessons from Argentine Experience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 2696-2712, December.
    11. Hisahiro Naito, 2013. "Pareto-improving Immigration and Its Effect on Capital Accumulation in the Presence of Social Security," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2013-004, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
    12. Hisahiro Naito, 2014. "Pareto-improving Immigration in the Presence of Social Security," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2014-003, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
    13. Bossi, Luca, 2008. "Intergenerational risk shifting through social security and bailout politics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2240-2268, July.
    14. Dirk Krueger & Felix Kubler, 2002. "Intergenerational Risk-Sharing via Social Security when Financial Markets Are Incomplete," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 407-410, May.
    15. Axel Börsch‐Supan & Florian Heiss & Alexander Ludwig & Joachim Winter, 2003. "Pension Reform, Capital Markets and the Rate of Return," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(2), pages 151-181, May.
    16. Börsch-Supan, A. & Härtl, K. & Leite, D.N., 2016. "Social Security and Public Insurance," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 781-863, Elsevier.
    17. Hisahiro Naito, 2015. "Immigration as a Policy Tool for the Double Burden Problem of Prefunding Pay-as-you-go Social Security System," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2015-002, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
    18. Gary Burtless, 2001. "The Rationale for Fundamental Pension Reform in Germany and the United States: An Assessment," CESifo Working Paper Series 510, CESifo.
    19. Makarski, Krzysztof & Tyrowicz, Joanna & Komada, Oliwia, 2021. "Efficiency versus Insurance: Capital Income Taxation and Privatizing Social Security," IZA Discussion Papers 14805, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Eisen, Roland, 2000. "(Partial) privatization social security: The Chilean model - a lesson to follow?," CFS Working Paper Series 2000/13, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:crr:issbrf:ib-5. 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: Amy Grzybowski or Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crrbcus.html .

    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.