Who gets paid to save?

Thanks to recent changes in the tax law, people can contribute more to their tax-deductible and non-tax-deductible savings plans, including 401(k) and Roth IRAs. But should they? The myriad interacting provisions of the tax code make it difficult to predict who will gain from government savings incentives and by how much. This study examines how new legislation affects the lifetime tax gains (or losses) of low, middle, and high lifetime earners if they contribute the maximum to 401(k) accounts, traditional IRA accounts, and Roth IRA accounts. The study finds that the new legislation changes little for low- and middle-income earners, who paid higher lifetime taxes under the old tax law if they participated fully in tax-deferred plans and would still do so under the new law. If a new tax credit created by the legislation were extended and indexed to inflation, low earners would break even, but middle earners would still lose. In contrast, participating in a Roth IRA provides a guaranteed and nontrivial lifetime tax saving; however, one need not contribute the maximum to receive the full benefit.Saving and investment

The equity of social services provided to children and senior citizens

A consideration of the degree of equity in the U.S. government's treatment of children vis-a-vis adults, particularly the elderly. The authors show that given current policy, today's and tomorrow's children could end up paying as much as 70 percent of their lifetime income to the government, whereas the current elderly will pay only about 25 percent on average.Social service

The baby boomers' mega-inheritance-myth or reality?

Retirees are one of the wealthiest segments of the U.S. population, and today's retirees have more wealth than any previous generation. Some have conjectured that bequests out of this wealth will significantly boost the resources of the baby boomers-the next generation of retirees-bridging the gap between their retirement needs and resources. This Economic Commentary argues against such a view and explains why boomers have no alternative but to save for their own retirement.Retirement ; Inheritance and succession

Social Security's treatment of postwar Americans: how bad can it get?

The authors consider Social Security’s treatment of postwar Americans under alternative tax increases and benefit cuts that would help bring the system’s finances into present-value balance. The alternatives include immediate tax increases, eliminating the ceiling on taxable payroll, immediate and sustained benefit cuts, raising the system’s normal retirement age, switching from wage to price indexing in calculating benefits, and limiting the price indexing of benefits. The choices made among these and other alternatives have important consequences for which postwar generations (and which of their members) will be forced to pay for the system’s long-term financing problems.Social security

Estimating a firm's age-productivity profile using the present value of workers' earnings

In hiring new workers, risk-neutral employers equate the present expected value of each worker's compensation to the present expected value of higher productivity, Data detailing how present expected compensation varies with the age of hire embed, therefore, information about how productivity varies with age. This paper infers age-productivity profiles using data on the present expected value of earnings of new hires of a Fortune 1000 firm. For each of the five occupation/sex groups considered, productivity falls with age, with productivity exceeding earnings for young workers and vice versa for older workers.Wages ; Labor productivity

The impact of Social Security and other factors on the distribution of wealth

Auerbach et al. (1995), document the dramatic postwar increase in the annuitization of the resources of America’s elderly. Gokhale et al. (1996) suggest that greater annuitization may explain the significant postwar rise in the consumption propensity of the elderly out of remaining lifetime resources. Gokhale et al. (2000) consider the related point that increased annuitization will reduce bequests, especially for lower and middle-income households, whose entire earnings are taxed under Social Security. By differentially disenfranchising the children of the poor from receipt of inheritances, Social Security may materially alter the distribution of wealth. This paper uses data from the PSID to further analyze how Social Security and other factors affect wealth inequality.Social security ; Wealth

Parallel scheduling of recursively defined arrays

A new method of automatic generation of concurrent programs which constructs arrays defined by sets of recursive equations is described. It is assumed that the time of computation of an array element is a linear combination of its indices, and integer programming is used to seek a succession of hyperplanes along which array elements can be computed concurrently. The method can be used to schedule equations involving variable length dependency vectors and mutually recursive arrays. Portions of the work reported here have been implemented in the PS automatic program generation system