IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/issbrf/ib2024-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Is the Insurance Value of Social Security by Race and Education?

Author

Listed:
  • Gal Wettstein
  • Karolos Arapakis
  • Yimeng Yin

Abstract

The value of Social Security’s retirement program to individuals is often measured by comparing expected benefits to payroll taxes. But this approach ignores the program’s insurance value, which is larger for those with more uncertain lifespans. The analysis estimates the insurance value using a lifecycle model for stylized households by race, education, and marital status. Accounting for insurance value, the results show that the program is significantly more valuable than lifetime taxes for almost all household types. Social Security’s insurance component also increases racial equity, because lifespans vary more among Black individuals.

Suggested Citation

  • Gal Wettstein & Karolos Arapakis & Yimeng Yin, 2024. "What Is the Insurance Value of Social Security by Race and Education?," Issues in Brief ib2024-03, Center for Retirement Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib2024-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://crr.bc.edu/what-is-the-insurance-value-of-social-security-by-race-and-education/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:crr:issbrf:ib2024-03. 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: Amy Grzybowski or Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crrbcus.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.