Social Security, the government budget and national savings

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August 11, 2020 | History

Social Security, the government budget and national savings

The overlapping generations model pioneered by Paul Samuelson is used to address an issue in Social Security. In the 1983 Social Security reform, Congress chose to build a substantial trust fund, with principal and interest both to be used for later benefits. That is, Congress chose payroll tax rates higher than pay-as-you-go levels while the baby-boomers were in the labor force in order to have payroll tax rates lower than pay-as-you-go while the baby-boomers were retired. The impact on national capital of these higher payroll taxes, with the implied trust fund buildup, has been controversial. The impact depends on the response of the rest of the government budget as well as the responses of individuals to these government actions. It also depends on the effects of future tax changes as well as initial tax changes. This paper explores a simple model distinguishing two types in each cohort - life-cycle savers and nonsavers, and allowing an income tax change to offset a fraction of the additional revenue from any payroll tax change. Analyzing a permanent trust fund increase, even if the unified budget is always balanced, the trust fund buildup increases national capital initially when payroll taxpayers have a lower propensity to save out of payroll taxes than income taxpayers do out of the income tax, as is plausible. The long run impact on capital depends on the fraction of the payroll tax revenue increase that is offset by an income tax decrease. Keywords: Social Security, government budget, national savings. JEL Classifications: H55, H20.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
24

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Cover of: Social Security, the government budget and national savings
Social Security, the government budget and national savings
2005, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics
in English

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Edition Notes

"March 17, 2005."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 23-24).

Abstract in HTML and working paper for download in PDF available via World Wide Web at the Social Science Research Network.

Published in
Cambridge, MA
Series
Working paper series / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics -- working paper 05-09, Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics) -- no. 05-09.

The Physical Object

Pagination
24 p. ;
Number of pages
24

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL24643776M
Internet Archive
socialsecuritygo00diam
OCLC/WorldCat
60564812

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Internet Archive item record

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August 11, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
May 7, 2011 Created by ImportBot initial import