IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/9750.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Social Security and Inequality over the Life Cycle

In: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform

Author

Listed:
  • Angus S. Deaton
  • Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas
  • Christina Paxson

Abstract

This paper examines the consequences of social security reform for the inequality of consumption across individuals. The idea is that inequality is at least in part the result of individual risk in earnings or asset returns, the effects of which accumulate over time to increase inequality within groups of people as they age. Institutions such as social security, that share risk across individuals, will moderate the transmission of individual risk into inequality. We examine how different social security systems, with different degrees of risk sharing, affect consumption inequality. We do so within the framework of the permanent income hypothesis, and also using richer models of consumption that incorporate precautionary saving motives and borrowing restrictions. Our results indicate that systems in which there is less sharing of earnings risk such as systems of individual accounts produce higher consumption inequality both before and after retirement. However, differences across individuals in the rate of return on assets (including social security assets held in individual accounts) produce only modest additional effects on inequality.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Angus S. Deaton & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Christina Paxson, 2002. "Social Security and Inequality over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters,in: The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, pages 115-148 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:9750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9750.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James M. Poterba & David A. Wise, 1998. "Individual Financial Decisions in Retirement Saving Plans and the Provision of Resources for Retirement," NBER Chapters,in: Privatizing Social Security, pages 363-401 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jacques Le Cacheux & Vincent Touzé, 2002. "Les modèles d'équilibre général calculable à générations imbriquées. Enjeux, méthodes et résultats," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 80(1), pages 87-113.
    2. Jimeno, Juan F. & Rojas, Juan A. & Puente, Sergio, 2008. "Modelling the impact of aging on social security expenditures," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 201-224, March.
    3. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/2091 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Huggett, Mark & Ventura, Gustavo & Yaron, Amir, 2006. "Human capital and earnings distribution dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 265-290, March.
    5. Peter Arno & Kyle Moore, 2016. "The "Natural" Interest Rate and Secular Stagnation," SCEPA working paper series. SCEPA's main areas of research are macroeconomic policy, inequality and poverty, and globalization. 2016-02, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    6. Thomas L. Hungerford, 2006. "The role of earnings and financial risk in distributional analyses of Social Security reform measures," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(2), pages 417-438.
    7. Falilou Fall, 2007. "Pension Reforms, Assets Returns and Wealth Distribution," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 85, pages 81-96.
    8. repec:sbe:breart:v:26:y:2006:i:1:a:2500 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Jess Benhabib & Alberto Bisin, 2006. "The distribution of wealth and redistributive policies," 2006 Meeting Papers 368, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Storesletten, Kjetil & Telmer, Christopher I. & Yaron, Amir, 2004. "Consumption and risk sharing over the life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 609-633, April.
    11. Heathcote, Jonathan & Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni L, 2004. "The Cross-Sectional Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 4296, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Kaymak, Barış & Poschke, Markus, 2016. "The evolution of wealth inequality over half a century: The role of taxes, transfers and technology," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-25.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies

    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:nberch:9750. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.