Archive: Zhenya Karamcheva
The brief’s key findings are: Low earners receive much more in Social Security benefits than they pay in Social Security taxes, reflecting the program’s progressive design. The interaction between Social Security provisions and income taxes has little net effect on the program’s progressivity: the exemption of employers’ Social Security contributions from workers’ income taxes makes the system…
Abstract This study calculates the impact of federal income taxes on the progressivity of the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program. It uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data linked with the Social Security Earnings Records to estimate OASI contributions and benefits for individuals and households, before and after income taxes, for thr…
