Archive: Gary Burtless

Cheerful senior man at home looking at his mail

The brief’s key findings are: One option for helping address Social Security’s long-term financial health is to shift a portion of its trust fund reserves into equities. Of course, equities would expose the program to greater financial risk. However, in terms of financial risk, both retrospective and prospective analyses suggest that equities would improve Socia…

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Abstract Some observers believe that investing a portion of the Social Security Trust Fund in equities would strengthen its finances and improve the program’s intergenerational risk-sharing.  However, equity investments would also expose the program to greater financial risk and potentially greater political risk.  Monte-Carlo simulation methods are used to investigate whether equity investments would likely…