Structural Reform of Social Security

摘要

Governments around the world have enacted or are currendy considering fundamental structural reforms of their Social Security pension programs. The key feature in these reforms is a shift from a pure pay-as-you-go tax-financed system, in which taxes on current workers are primarily distributed to current retirees, to a mixed system that combines pay-as-you-go benefits with investment-based personal retirement accounts. Countries as different as Australia, Chile, China, Britain and Sweden have already adopted mixed systems of this type (Feldstein, 1998; Feldstein and Siebert, 2002). In the United States, President Clinton almost proposed such a plan (Elmendorf, Liebman and Wilcox, 2001), and President Bush has made it a major priority for his second term.