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The US Social Security program was created in part as an explicit response to the Great Depression. We evaluate the performance of Social Security as a protective safety net against a rare episode of sudden and significant loss of private wealth such as the Great Depression. We construct a model in which a rare event causes a shock to wealth at an unknown time. How well does Social Security function as a safety net against such risk? The answer depends critically on whether households optimize in the face of this risk. If the household has full information on the distribution of rare event risk and solves a dynamic stochastic problem to hedge this risk, then Social Security is unnecessary along this dimension. Alternatively, if the household does not account for rare event risk in its financial planning, then Social Security can provide very large welfare gains as a safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To help manage longevity risk, Social Security pays three types of benefits to retirees: retirement benefits as a life annuity, spousal benefits until the death of the primary earner, and survivor benefits after the death of primary earner. How effective is Social Security at insuring couples against the joint longevity risks that they face? We take a public finance approach to this important question by comparing a Laissez Faire economy to a variety of different public insurance structures including the First Best, the Second Best, and US Social Security. We find that the welfare gains to couples from participating in the US Social Security system are large, and the survivor benefit feature is the key to this result while the spousal benefit provides very little efficiency gains. In fact, the optimal mixture of spousal and survivor benefits (i.e., the Second Best) improves ex ante efficiency by providing a larger payment to widows and a smaller spousal benefit than the current US system. We obtain these results using a theoretical model of couples who have full information about gender‐specific longevity risks and solve a dynamic stochastic (regime‐switching) problem to optimally hedge these risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth in overall life expectancy is straining the Social Security budget, and the gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is widening. Motivated by these facts, this paper does four things. First, we develop a simple way to summarize the degree of progressivity in a Social Security system. Second, we show that growth in the life expectancy gap over the last few decades unwinds three‐quarters of the progressivity of the Social Security system. Third, we develop simple reforms to Social Security that maintain the progressivity of the system and restore fiscal solvency. Fourth, we estimate the welfare effects of these potential reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To maintain long-run solvency in light of changing demographics, the US Social Security system needs to be reformed. We present three reform options that protect the retirement benefits of the economically vulnerable while also balancing the Social Security budget. We refer to these three options as Rawlsian reforms because, with each reform option, the Social Security benefits of those at the low end of the income distribution are left intact. Two of our reforms break the link between the benefit cap and the tax cap by lowering the benefit cap. We explore the effect of each reform on ex-ante expected utility, the distribution of private savings, and the distribution of lifetime income in a life-cycle model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]