"Will Social Security Be There For You?": How Americans Perceive Their Benefits

Jeff Dominitz, Charles Manski and Jordan Heinz

No 9798, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Americans may be uncertain of their future Social Security benefits for several reasons, including uncertainty about their future labor earnings, the formula now determining Social Security benefits, and the future structure of the Social Security system. To learn how Americans perceive their benefits, we have elicited Social Security expectations from respondents to the Survey of Economic Expectations. We have also performed a more intensive face-to-face survey on a small sample of respondents. We find clear and striking evidence of substantial uncertainty and heterogeneity of beliefs about the long-term existence of the Social Security system and about the level of benefits provided should the system survive.

JEL-codes: D84 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9798.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:nbr:nberwo:9798

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9798

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().