Aging populations are stressing underfunded national social security systems. From the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School, this book explores proposals to reform social security, including privatization, means-testing, and raising retirement ages, as well as tax and benefit changes. Economists, actuaries, gerontologists, and academics join in a search for viable solutions, drawing lessons from the global context.

Prospects for Social Security Reform

Edited by Olivia S. Mitchell, Robert J. Myers, and Howard Young

1999 | 424 pages | Cloth $89.95
Economics | Public Policy
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Table of Contents

Preface

PART I. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL SECURITY PROBLEM?
1. An Overview of the Issues
2. Measuring Solvency in the Social Security System
3. Criteria for Evaluating Social Security Reform
4. New Opportunities for the Social Security System

PART II. ASSESSING THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF SOCIAL SECURITY
5. Social Security Money's Worth
6. Simulating Benefit Levels Under Alternative Social Security Reforms
7. Stochastic Simulation of Economic Growth Effects
8. Thinking About Social Security's Trust Fund
9. Government Guarantees for Old Age Income
10. Means Testing Social Security
11. Social Security and Employer Induced Retirement

PART III. POLITICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM
12. Compliance in Social Security Systems Around the World
13. Employer Responses to Social Security Reform
14. An Actuarial Perspective on How Social Security Reform Could Influence Employer-Sponsored Pensions
15. An Organized Labor Perspective on Social Security Reform
16. Women as Widows Under a Reformed Social Security System
17. Investment and Administrative Constraints on Individual Social Security Accounts
18. Americans' Views of Social Security and Social Security Reforms

Contributors
Index