The Joint Labor Supply Decision of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System

Shinichi Nishiyama ()

Working Papers from University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center

Abstract: The current U.S. Social Security program redistributes resources from high wage workers to low wage workers and from two-earner couples to one-earner couples. The present paper extends a standard general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model with uninsurable wage shocks to analyze the effect of spousal and survivors benefits on the labor supply of married couples. The heterogeneous-agent model calibrated to the 2009 U.S. economy predicts that removing spousal and survivors benefits would increase female market work hours by 4.3-4.9% and total output by 1.1-1.5% in the long run, depending on the government financing assumption. If the increased tax revenue due to higher economic activity after the policy change was redistributed in a lumpsum manner, a phased-in cohort-by-cohort removal of these benefits would make all current and future age cohorts on average better off.

Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dge and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The joint labor supply decision of married couples and the U.S. Social Security pension system (2019)
Working Paper: The Joint Labor Supply Decision of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System (2015)
Working Paper: The Joint Labor Supply Decision of Married Couples and the Social Security Pension System (2011)
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