Tag: progressivity of Social Security

Social Security dramatically reduces inequality between white and minority retirement wealth. A forthcoming study by two of my colleagues, Wenliang Hou and Geoff Sanzenbacher, looks at retirement wealth by race. They defined wealth broadly to include assets in retirement plans (including defined benefit plans), non-retirement plan assets, housing wealth, and Social Security benefits. They used…

Abstract This analysis uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the sources of variation in mortality for individuals of varying socio-economic status. The use of the HRS allows a distinction between education and a measure of career earnings as primary determinants of socio-economic status for men and women separately. We us…