How Well Did Social Security Mitigate The Effects Of The Great Recession?

Using a computational life cycle model, this article assesses how Social Security affects the welfare of different types of individuals during the Great Recession. Overall, we find that Social Security reduces the average welfare losses for agents alive at the time of the Great Recession by the equivalent of 1.4% of expected future lifetime consumption. Moreover, we show that although the program mitigates some of the welfare losses for most agents, it is particularly effective at mitigating the losses for agents who are poorer and/or older at the time of the shock.