IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2200.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should Social Security Benefits Increase with Age?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Feldstein

Abstract

This paper shows that the optimal relation between social security benefits and retiree age depends on balancing the advantage of providing an otherwise unavailable actuarially fair annuity against the lower rate of return earned in a pay-as-you-go social security system. The ability of compulsory social security programs to provide an actuarially fair annuity implies that benefits should increase with age while the lower return on social security contributions than on private saving implies that a larger fraction of total benefits should be paid during the early years of retirement. In an economy that contains a mixture of rational life cycle savers and completely myopic individuals who do no saving, it is optimal for benefits to decline during the earlier part of the retirement period and then to begin rising. Numerical calculations based on actual macroeconomic parameters and representative survival probabilities suggest that the optimal age for minimum benefits occurs before age 75.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Feldstein, 1987. "Should Social Security Benefits Increase with Age?," NBER Working Papers 2200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2200
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2200.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Antoine Bommier & Marie‐Louise Leroux & Jean‐Marie Lozachmeur, 2011. "Differential mortality and social security," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(1), pages 273-289, February.
    2. Matthew Weinzierl, 2014. "Seesaws and Social Security Benefits Indexing," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(2 (Fall)), pages 137-196.
    3. Martin Feldstein & Andrew Samwick, 1998. "The Transition Path in Privatizing Social Security," NBER Chapters, in: Privatizing Social Security, pages 215-264, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Mohamed Bouzahzah & Frédéric Docquier & Oliver Paddison, 2002. "Retraites, croissance et inégalités en présence d'individus myopes," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 155(4), pages 31-44.
    5. J.C. Herbert Emery & Jesse A. Matheson, 2012. "Should income transfers be targeted or universal? Insights from public pension influences on elderly mortality in Canada, 1921-1966," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(1), pages 247-269, February.
    6. Armando Barrientos & Daniele Malerba, 2020. "Social assistance and inclusive growth," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(3), pages 33-53, July.
    7. Tran, Chung & Woodland, Alan, 2014. "Trade-offs in means tested pension design," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 72-93.
    8. Sheng-Cheng Hu, 1996. "Myopia and Social Security Financing," Public Finance Review, , vol. 24(3), pages 319-348, July.
    9. Altindag, Duha T. & Baek, Deokrye & Lee, Hong & Merkle, Jessica, 2020. "Free lunch for all? The impact of universal school lunch on student misbehavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    10. Sheiner, Louise, 1994. "Marginal Tax Rates and Health Care Reform," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(3), pages 497-517, September.
    11. Del Rey, Elena & Lopez-Garcia, Miguel-Angel, 2016. "Endogenous growth and welfare effects of education subsidies and intergenerational transfers," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 531-539.
    12. Andras Simonovits, 2017. "How did Feldstein (1985) undervalue the optimal level of social security benefits?," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1722, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    13. James Sefton & Justin Van De Ven & Martin Weale, 2008. "Means Testing Retirement Benefits: fostering equity or discouraging savings?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 556-590, April.
    14. Simonovits, András, 2018. "Hogyan értékelte alá a tb-nyugdíj "optimális" szintjét Feldstein 1985-ben? [How did Feldstein undervalue the "optimal" level of social-security benefits?]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 66-73.
    15. Oskari Juurikkala, 2008. "Punishing The Poor: A Critique Of Means‐Tested Retirement Benefits," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 11-16, March.
    16. Matthew Weinzierl, 2014. "Seesaws and Social Security Benefits Indexing," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 137-196.
    17. Armando Barrientos, 2011. "On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    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:2200. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.