Research report evaluating economic implications of social security in the USA - discusses three competing economic theories on people's economic decision making, namely the life-cycle, multigeneration and short-horizon models, outlines historical trends and the impact of social security on saving, labour supply and long term income distribution. Graphs and references.

This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest

A Documentary History tells the story of the creation and development of the U.S. Social Security program through primary source documents, from its antecendents and founding in 1935, to the controversial issues of the present. This unique reference presents the complex history of Social Security in an accessible volume that highlights the program's major moments and events.

Chapters include: "Income distribution and welfare programs", "State and local government expenditures" and "Health economics and private health insurance".