Income Maintenance in Old Age: What Can be Learned from Cross-National Comparisons

Timothy Smeeding () and James Williamson ()

No 263, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review the recent evidence on the antipoverty effectiveness and other characteristics of income maintenance systems for the elderly in the rich nations of the world. As we move toward Social Security reform in the United States, we do so knowing that a comparatively high fraction of our older population experience, income poverty compared to their counterparts in other nations. Strategies to reduce the future Social Security deficit need to take into account the way that program changes affect poverty and benefit adequacy as well as fiscal soundness. Other nations offer approaches which would help us to achieve lower poverty rates while also providing fiscally responsible solutions to the future public costs of an aging society through reforms to the Social Security system.

Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2001-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published in Genus LIX, no. 1 (2003): 51–83.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/263.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:263

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski ().