Five Fallacies in the Social Security Debate

Mats Persson

No 686, Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies

Abstract: This paper discusses five examples of the conventional wisdom that has often been expressed in the social security debate, even among academic economists. These are: 1. The major problem in most social security systems is that of demography: people simply live too long. 2. Disregarding the issue of demography, a Pay-As-You-Go system is inferior to a fully funded system since the former usually has a lower rate of return. 3. Disregarding the portfolio aspect (which might favor a PAYG system), a funded system dominates a PAYG system in a world of certainty. 4. The social security system is a suitable instrument for intergenerational risk sharing. 5. The government is a safe and reliable provider of insurance.

Keywords: Social security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2000-06-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:328563/FULLTEXT01 (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:hhs:iiessp:0686

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hanna Christiansson ().