Overview

As more baby-boomers retire and enter the Social Security system, the current pension surplus will turn to deficit over the next decade and, thanks to increased life expectancy, retiring baby-boomers will draw Social Security benefits for a longer period. Focusing on the finances of Social Security by itself is not enough. To fix the US pension system, other issues also need to be addressed: adequacy of retirement income and old age poverty; labor market participation and economic incentives facing older workers; soundness of state and local government, as well as corporate, pension plans; the low US national saving rate; and redistribution between generations. In this study, Martin Neil Baily and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard explore how other countries have solved the same fundamental problems facing the US pension system. The study reveals that the design of US Social Security is fundamentally sound, and that the challenges it faces are smaller than those facing mandatory pension systems in most other OECD countries. Baily and Kirkegaard conclude that transforming the basic tenets of Social Security is neither warranted nor wise. They instead propose targeted changes to parts of the Social Security system, with the cost of reforms distributed across generations.

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9781282040786

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