How Representative are Representative Workers? An Assessment of the Hypothetical Workers Commonly Used in Social Security Studies

Wade Pfau

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: An understanding of the financial and distributional consequences of Social Security reform requires knowledge about the actual life circumstances of participants, including the level and pattern of their lifetime earnings and when they retire. Some analyses of Social Security reform make simplifying assumptions about these characteristics by using “hypothetical workers” with set career paths. We seek to develop greater understanding about actual lifetime earnings patterns to compare with hypothetical workers and find discrepancies which lead typical hypothetical workers to produce a more favorable impression for defined-contribution pension reforms. We suggest modifications to make a more suitable hypothetical worker.

Keywords: Social Security; Hypothetical Workers; Defined-Contribution Pensions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Income Distribution 2.18(2009): pp. 92-117

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19036/1/MPRA_paper_19036.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Representative are Representative Workers? An Assessment of the Hypothetical Workers Commonly Used in Social Security Studies (2009)
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:pra:mprapa:19036

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().