Microsimulation is an extraordinarily powerful tool for analyzing the short- and long-term impacts of demographic trends and policy reforms on economic well-being. Microsimulation provides insights to the size, direction, and characteristics of winners and losers of policy reforms. It is a vital analysis tool for policymakers given the complexity of the US tax and benefit systems, as well as complex social interactions.
Including employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) in taxable compensation would increase income and payroll tax receipts, but would also increase Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) benefits by adding ESI to the OASDI earnings base. The increased present value of OASDI...
This paper simulates the impact of the 2008 stock market crash on future retirement savings under alternative scenarios. If stocks remain depressed as after the 1974 crash, 20 percent of preboomers born 1941-45 and 22 percent of late boomers born 1961-65 would see their retirement incomes drop...
This paper presents alternative measures of actual and projected net benefits (benefits minus payroll taxes) from the Old and Survivors Insurance (OASI) component of Social Security, based on results from a microsimulation model. The simulations take into account marital histories, income, and...
The Congressional Budget Office and government actuaries for decades have shown that Social Security and Medicare remain on unsustainable tracks, but it is often hard...
Most Social Security reform proposals have focused on one goal: restoring the program’s long-run fiscal balance. Yet under all recent proposed restructurings we have examined—whether...
