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Implications of the Bush Commission Pension Reforms for Married Couples

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by Barry Bosworth, Gary Burtless and Benjamin Keys February 2003

WP#2003-3  

Abstract

In December 2001 the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security published a report describing plans to reform Social Security through the introduction of new, privately managed, defined-contribution pension accounts. The new accounts are to be financed by diverting a portion of payroll taxes that are now used to finance pensions under the existing defined-benefit public pension system. This paper evaluates the overall impact of the Commission’s second plan on the distribution of retirement income and rates of return on pension contributions within and among future generations of married couples.

For executive summary in PDF

For full paper in PDF

Barry Bosworth is a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Gary Burtless is the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution. Benjamin Keys is also with The Brookings Institution. The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) funded as part of the Retirement Research Consortium. The opinions and conclusions are solely those of the authors and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policies of SSA or any agency of the Federal Government or of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.