Suchergebnisse

Annual, before-tax income is the most common official statistic used to measure economic well-being and therefore underlies the design of most anti-poverty programs or other redistributive economic policies. Notwithstanding, extended income measures as well as consumption based measures are gaining increasing currency in scientific analysis of economic well-being. Our findings suggest that a consumption-based measure gives very different answers about relative economic standing across income and age groups, and somewhat different answers about trends in resources over time. More importantly, by explicitly measuring the relationship between income and consumption across groups and time, we are able to evaluate how differences in effective taxation, saving rates, and investment in consumer durables affect the alternative measures of economic well-being.

AbstractAnalysis and discussion of Social Security policy are usually based on expected fiscal and societal outcomes. However, future demographic and economic trends are uncertain, and thus ultimate outcomes for aggregate system financial flows and the distribution of taxes and benefits across generations are uncertain. This paper analyzes a state‐dependent approach to policy in which future Social Security benefit formulas are tied to realized economic and demographic outcomes over time. The results, based on a microsimulation model with stochastic capabilities, show the extent to which it is possible to systematically address uncertainty about system finances and distributional outcomes. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management