Will Aging Baby Boomers Bust the Federal Budget?
Ronald Lee and
Jonathan Skinner
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1999, vol. 13, issue 1, 117-140
Abstract:
The authors analyze in three steps the influence of the projected mortality decline on the long-run finances of the Social Security System. First, mortality decline adds person years of life which are distributed across the life cycle. The interaction of this distribution with the age distribution of taxes minus benefits determines the steady state financial consequences of mortality decline. Second, examination of past mortality trends in the United State and of international trends in low mortality populations, suggests that mortality will decline much faster than foreseen by the SSA's forecasts. Third, based on work on stochastic demographic forecasting, stochastic forecasts of the system's actuarial balance are derived, indicating a broader range of demographic uncertainty than in the latest SSA forecasts, and a relatively greater contribution to uncertainty from fertility than mortality.
JEL-codes: H61 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.13.1.117
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.13.1.117 (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:aea:jecper:v:13:y:1999:i:1:p:117-140
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Economic Perspectives is currently edited by Enrico Moretti
More articles in Journal of Economic Perspectives from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().