IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11250.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rethinking Social Insurance

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Feldstein

Abstract

This paper begins by discussing the nature of and rationale for social insurance programs. I then consider three political principles and four economic principles that could guide the design and reform of social insurance programs. These ideas are then applied to unemployment insurance, Social Security pensions, health insurance and Medicare. A common theme is the advantage of incorporating investment based personal accounts in each of these programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Feldstein, 2005. "Rethinking Social Insurance," NBER Working Papers 11250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11250
    Note: EFG PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11250.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty, 2004. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance When Income Effects are Large," NBER Working Papers 10500, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Feldstein, Martin, 1996. "The Missing Piece in Policy Analysis: Social Security Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 1-14, May.
    3. Coronado Julia Lynn & Fullerton Don & Glass Thomas, 2011. "The Progressivity of Social Security," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-45, November.
    4. Feldstein, Martin S, 1987. "Should Social Security Benefits Be Means Tested?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 468-484, June.
    5. Martin Feldstein, 1978. "The Welfare Cost of Capital Income Taxation," NBER Chapters, in: Research in Taxation, pages 29-51, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Baily, Martin Neil, 1978. "Some aspects of optimal unemployment insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 379-402, December.
    7. Feldstein, Martin S, 1974. "Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(5), pages 905-926, Sept./Oct.
    8. Feldstein, Martin S, 1976. "Temporary Layoffs in the Theory of Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(5), pages 937-957, October.
    9. Feldstein, Martin S, 1978. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance on Temporary Layoff Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(5), pages 834-846, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. MacCulloch, Robert, 2001. "Does social insurance help secure property rights?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6648, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Charles Yuji Horioka, 2014. "The Life and Work Of Martin Stuart (“Marty”) Feldstein," UP School of Economics Discussion Papers 201410, University of the Philippines School of Economics.
    3. Assar Lindbeck & Mats Persson, 2003. "The Gains from Pension Reform," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 74-112, March.
    4. Martin Feldstein & Daniel Altman, 2007. "Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 21, pages 35-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Peter Fredriksson & Bertil Holmlund, 2006. "Improving Incentives in Unemployment Insurance: A Review of Recent Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 357-386, July.
    6. Disney, Richard, 2000. "Declining public pensions in an era of demographic ageing: Will private provision fill the gap?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4-6), pages 957-973, May.
    7. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2002. "Informal Family Insurance And The Design Of The Welfare State," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 481-503, July.
    8. Holmlund, B., 1997. "Unemployment Insurance in Theory and Practice," CEPR Discussion Papers 380, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    9. Diogo Britto, 2016. "Unemployment Insurance and the Duration of Employment: Theory and Evidence from a Regression Kink Design," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def048, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    10. Guo, Audrey & Johnston, Andrew C., 2020. "The Finance of Unemployment Compensation and its Consequence for the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 13330, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Zweimüller, Josef, 2018. "Unemployment insurance and the labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-14.
    12. repec:dpr:wpaper:0905 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. 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.
    14. Martin S. Feldstein & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2002. "The Distributional Effects of an Investment-Based Social Security System," NBER Chapters, in: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, pages 263-326, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. van Groezen, B.J.A.M. & Meijdam, A.C. & Verbon, H.A.A., 2002. "Social Security Reform and Population Ageing in a Two-Sector Growth Model," Discussion Paper 2002-25, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Albanese, Andrea & Picchio, Matteo & Ghirelli, Corinna, 2020. "Timed to Say Goodbye: Does Unemployment Benefit Eligibility Affect Worker Layoffs?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    17. Gilles Le Garrec & Stéphane Lhuissier, 2011. "Life expectancy, heavy work and the return to education: lessons for the social security reform," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01069511, HAL.
    18. Frank T. Denton & Byron G. Spencer, 1998. "Economic Costs of Population Aging," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 339, McMaster University.
    19. Stéphane Auray & David L. Fuller, 2020. "Eligibility, experience rating, and unemployment insurance take‐up," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), pages 1059-1107, July.
    20. Saez, Emmanuel & Landais, Camille & Michaillat, Pascal, 2010. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance over the Business Cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 8132, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. Gilles Le Garrec, 2012. "Social security and growth in an aging economy : the case of acturial fairness," Working Papers hal-01070354, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies

    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:nbr:nberwo:11250. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.