Historical Redistribution Under The Social Security Old Age And Survivors Insurance Program

"This study is the third in a series of studies that use comprehensive Social Security administrative data on past earnings and benefits by year, age, gender, and race to analyze historical redistribution across those characteristics under the Social Security program"--Summary.

This study is the third in a series of studies that use comprehensive Social Security administrative data on past earnings and benefits by year, age, gender, and race to analyze historical redistribution across those characteristics under the Social Security program. It examines historical lifetime redistribution to date across and within cohorts born through 1927, combining and extending the results of the previous two studies, for which less historical data were available. Redistributional estimates incorporating the additional data confirm the results of the earlier studies relative lifetime redistributional outcomes to data under the DI program have generally been much more favorable for "Other Races" than for "Whites;" have generally been more favorable for females than for males in most, but not all, of the cohorts considered; and accumulated benefits have generally exceeded accumulated taxes by substantial margins for all but the earliest birth cohort groups. In contrast to outcomes under the OASI program, accumulated net transfers to date for very early birth cohorts have generally been negative under the DI program taken by itself, although the size of these negative net transfers is relatively small.

This paper provides a brief overview of the more important studies of lifetime redistribution under the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) programs. Studies are categorized into two types: those that focus on redistribution across successive cohorts of workers or typical members of those cohorts, and those that focus on the distribution of results across characteristics of interest within particular cohorts of workers. A list of related studies is provided at the end for those interested in additional reading.

In nearly every industrialized country, large aging populations and increased life expectancy have placed enormous pressure on social security programs—and, until recently, the pressure has been compounded by a trend toward retirement at an earlier age. With a larger fraction of the population receiving benefits, in coming decades social security in many countries may have to be reformed in order to remain financially viable. This volume offers a cross-country analysis of the effects of disability insurance programs on labor force participation by older workers. Drawing on measures of health that are comparable across countries, the authors explore the extent to which differences in the labor force are determined by disability insurance programs and to what extent disability insurance reforms are prompted by the circumstances of a country’s elderly population.