Search Results
Journal Article
The 1995 budget and health care reform: a generational perspective
A presentation of the baseline generational accounts for 1992, estimating both the effect of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the further impact of the Clinton administration's health reform proposal.
Working Paper
Generational accounts: a meaningful alternative to deficit accounting
A presentation of a set of generational accounts that can be used as an alternative to the federal budget deficit in assessing intergenerational policy, concluding that the fiscal burdens on future generations will be significantly larger than those on existing generations if current tax policy remains unchanged.
Working Paper
Gains from trade under uncertainty, once again
Working Paper
Simulating the transmission of wealth inequality via bequests
Answering the question of how much wealth inequality arises from inheritance inequality requires data that are unavailable and potentially uncollectable. The alternative approach taken here (from Blinder [1974, 1976] and Davies [1982]) is to simulate the transmission of inequality via bequests.
Working Paper
Social security and Medicare policy from the perspective of generational accounting
An application of the generational accounting method of fiscal policy analysis to projected spending paths for Social Security and Medicare suggesting that, under realistic assumptions for these programs, future generations as well as current young Americans could bear a significantly larger share of the burden of government spending than previously thought.
Working Paper
The impact of Social Security and other factors on the distribution of wealth
Auerbach et al. (1995), document the dramatic postwar increase in the annuitization of the resources of America?s elderly. Gokhale et al. (1996) suggest that greater annuitization may explain the significant postwar rise in the consumption propensity of the elderly out of remaining lifetime resources. Gokhale et al. (2000) consider the related point that increased annuitization will reduce bequests, especially for lower and middle-income households, whose entire earnings are taxed under Social Security. By differentially disenfranchising the children of the poor from receipt of inheritances, ...
Working Paper
The adequacy of life insurance: evidence from the health and retirement survey
This study examines life insurance adequacy among married American couples approaching retirement based on the 1992 Health and Retirement Survey with matched Social Security earnings histories. It evaluates each household's life insurance needs based on new financial planning software that embodies a life-cycle-planning model and covers a broad array of demographic, economic, and financial characteristics. A sizable minority of households are significantly underinsured. Almost one third of wives and over 10 percent of husbands would have suffered living-standard reductions greater than 20 ...
Working Paper
Social Security's treatment of postwar Americans: how bad can it get?
The authors consider Social Security?s treatment of postwar Americans under alternative tax increases and benefit cuts that would help bring the system?s finances into present-value balance. The alternatives include immediate tax increases, eliminating the ceiling on taxable payroll, immediate and sustained benefit cuts, raising the system?s normal retirement age, switching from wage to price indexing in calculating benefits, and limiting the price indexing of benefits. The choices made among these and other alternatives have important consequences for which postwar generations (and which of ...
Working Paper
Generational accounting: the case of Italy
An examination of the generational imbalance in current Italian fiscal policy, showing that unless dramatic steps are taken soon, future generations' net tax bill will be four or more times the amount that today's newborns are slated to pay.
Working Paper
The equity of social services provided to children and senior citizens
A consideration of the degree of equity in the U.S. government's treatment of children vis-a-vis adults, particularly the elderly. The authors show that given current policy, today's and tomorrow's children could end up paying as much as 70 percent of their lifetime income to the government, whereas the current elderly will pay only about 25 percent on average.