Demographic Shock and Social Security: A Political Economy Perspective

Georges Casamatta (), Helmuth Cremer and Pierre Pestieau

International Tax and Public Finance, 2001, vol. 8, issue 4, 417-431

Abstract: We assume that individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In the steady state, workers with wages in the intermediate range join the retired persons to form a majority and vote for a positive level of social security. When a shock decreases population growth, entrenched interests can constrain majority voting decisions and prevent reforms in the name of entitlements. We show that from a Rawlsian viewpoint it may be desirable to rely on these entitlements to protect the low wage earners of the transition generations. However, when the possibility of fixing a basic pension is introduced, it constitutes a better instrument than entitlements. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001

Keywords: social security; majority voting; entitlements; aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1011214823251 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Demographic Shock and Social Security: A Political Economy Perspective (2001)
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:kap:itaxpf:v:8:y:2001:i:4:p:417-431

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10797/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/A:1011214823251

Access Statistics for this article

International Tax and Public Finance is currently edited by Ronald B. Davies and Kimberly Scharf

More articles in International Tax and Public Finance from Springer, International Institute of Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().