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Labor supply responses to marginal Social Security benefits: Evidence from discontinuities

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Author Info

  • Liebman, Jeffrey B.
  • Luttmer, Erzo F.P.
  • Seif, David G.

Abstract

A key question for Social Security reform is whether workers respond to the link on the margin between the Social Security taxes they pay and the Social Security benefits they will receive. We estimate the effects of the marginal Social Security benefits that accrue with additional earnings on three measures of labor supply: retirement age, hours, and labor earnings. We develop a new approach to identifying these incentive effects by exploiting five provisions in the Social Security benefit rules that generate discontinuities in marginal benefits or non-linearities in marginal benefits that converge to discontinuities as uncertainty about the future is resolved. We find that individuals approaching retirement (age 52 and older) respond to the Social Security tax-benefit link on the extensive margin of their labor supply decisions: we estimate that a 10% increase in the net-of-tax share reduces the two-year retirement hazard by a statistically significant 2.0 percentage points from a base rate of 15%. The evidence with regard to labor supply responses on the intensive margin is more mixed: we estimate that the elasticity of hours with respect to the net-of-tax share is 0.42 and statistically significant, but we do not find a statistically significant earnings elasticity. Though we lack statistical power to estimate results within subsamples precisely, the retirement response is driven mostly by the female subsample, while the hours response comes from the male subsample.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Public Economics.

Volume (Year): 93 (2009)
Issue (Month): 11-12 (December)
Pages: 1208-1223

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Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:93:y:2009:i:11-12:p:1208-1223

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578

Related research

Keywords: Social security Discontinuity Labor supply Retirement Tax-benefit link;

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2011. "The role of information for retirement behavior: Evidence based on the stepwise introduction of the Social Security Statement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 913-925, August.
  2. Hélène Blake & Marc Sangnier, 2010. "Senior activity rate, retirement incentives and labor relations," PSE Working Papers halshs-00564826, HAL.
  3. Staubli, Stefan & Zweimüller, Josef, 2011. "Does Raising the Retirement Age Increase Employment of Older Workers?," IZA Discussion Papers 5863, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2005. "Labor Supply Effects of the Recent Social Security Benefit Cuts: Empirical Estimates Using Cohort Discontinuities," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 33, Collegio Carlo Alberto, revised 2006.
  5. Selin, Håkan, 2011. "What happens to the husband’s retirement decision when the wife’s retirement incentives change?," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2011:8, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
  6. Fouarge D. & Grip A. de & Montizaan R.M., 2013. "How sensitive are individual retirement expectations to raising the retirement age?," Research Memoranda 006, Maastricht : ROA, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market.
  7. Jeffrey B. Liebman & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2012. "The Perception of Social Security Incentives for Labor Supply and Retirement: The Median Voter Knows More Than You’d Think," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 26, pages 1-42 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Jeffrey B. Liebman & Erzo F.P. Luttmer, 2011. "Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence From a Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 17287, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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