This paper focuses on comparing public and private individual wealth over the life-cycle, when individuals face an uncertain length of life. We also analyze how a fully funded and actuarially fair Social Security affects the desire to annuitize private wealth. Within this framework, we find that a social security system can contribute to reaching a higher national wealth, even when the economy is composed of selfish individuals. Thus, by means of some simulations we obtain the result that a payroll tax of 6 percent increases individual wealth up to 17 percent. This increment, however, is obtained under the assumption that insurance companies offer fair annuities. On the contrary, under an unfair private annuity market, individual wealth can decrease around 10 percent for the same payroll tax.
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Paper provided by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History) in its series Working Papers in Economic Theory with number
2006/07.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Thomas Davidoff & Jeffrey R. Brown & Peter A. Diamond, 2005.
"Annuities and Individual Welfare,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1573-1590, December.
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