文档介绍：NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES
THEEFFECTOF SOCIAL SECURITY ON SAVING
Martin Feldstein
Working Paper No. 334
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, NA 02138
April 1979
NBER Working Paper 334
April 1979
SUNMARY
The Effect of Social Security on Saving
Martin Feldstein
This paper, which was presented as the 1979 Frank Paish Lecture to the
British Association of University Teachers of Economics, provides a non—technical
summary of the recent studies of the effects of social security on private
saving. The first section discusses the theoretical indeterminacy of the effect
of social security while the second part reviews the empirical studies.
Although the traditional life cycle theory of saving clearly implies that
the anticipation of social security benefits reduces private saving, a richer
theoretical framework suggests several reasons why the saving response cannot
be unambiguously established by theoretical reasoning. These reasons include
the indirect effects of social security on retirement behavior, private pensions,
and gifts and bequests.
The econometric studies resolve this uncertainty and indicate that social
security appears to reduce private saving substantially. These studies include
(1) aggregate time series evidence on the . saving rates over the past 50
years, (2) microeconomic evidence on the accumulation of wealth by a large
sample of individual households, and (3) parisons of saving
rates in major industrial countries.
National Bureau of Economic Research
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The Effect of Social Security on Saving*
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MartinFeldstein
I am pleased and honored to have been asked to deliverthe 1979 Frank
Paish Lecture. Professor Paishts studies over many years have
added to our understanding of the economic system in general
and the British economy in particular. The process of savingand capital
formati