A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Private versus public old-age security
Abstract We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.
Private versus public old-age security
Abstract We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.
Private versus public old-age security
Barnett, Richard C. (author) / Bhattacharya, Joydeep (author) / Puhakka, Mikko (author)
2017
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
RVK:
ELIB39
/
ELIB45
Local classification FBW:
oek 2608
BKL:
74.80
Demographie
/
83.31$jWirtschaftswachstum
/
74.80$jDemographie$XGeographie
/
83.31
Wirtschaftswachstum
Private versus public service location behaviour
Online Contents | 1991
|Private sector versus public sector externalities
Online Contents | 1996
|Public versus private: Barcelona's market system, 1868-1975
Online Contents | 2010
|Public versus private discounting for life-cycle cost
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005
|Public versus private: Barcelona’s market system, 1868–1975
Taylor & Francis Verlag | 2010
|