Benefits And Beneficiaries

Principles and distributional value judgments; Compensating variation, consumer surplus change and willingness to pay; To accounting price of foreign exchange; The valuation of traded goods; Foreign exchange as a numeraire; Accounting prices for labor; First approximation of the valuation of non-traded and services; The discount rate; Cost-benefit analysis of an industrial project; The use of input-output techniques; Different assumptions and value judgments.

There are numerous types of benefits paid under the Social Security programs of the United States, with each type of benefit having its own set of eligibility rules and benefit formula. It is likely that there is an association between the type of benefit a person receives and the economic circumstances of the beneficiary. This paper explores that association using records from the Current Population Survey exactly matched to administrative records from the Social Security Administration. Divorced beneficiaries are a particular focus of this paper. Type of benefit is found to be a strong predictor of economic well-being. Two large groups of beneficiaries, retired-worker and aged married-spouse beneficiaries, are fairly well off. Other types of beneficiaries tend to resemble the overall U.S. population or are decidedly worse off. Divorced-spouse beneficiaries have an unusually high incidence of poverty and of serious health problems. A proposal to increase benefits for these beneficiaries is evaluated. Results indicate that much of the additional government expenditures would be received by those with low income.

Principles and distributional value judgments; Compensating variation, consumer surplus change and willingness to pay; To accounting price of foreign exchange; The valuation of traded goods; Foreign exchange as a numeraire; Accounting prices for labor; First approximation of the valuation of non-traded and services; The discount rate; Cost-benefit analysis of an industrial project; The use of input-output techniques; Different assumptions and value judgments.