The impact of public policies on different generations: Evidence from various countries.
详细信息
文摘
This dissertation analyzes public policies in different countries and assesses their impacts on different generations. The first chapter tests for intergenerational altruism using Italian cohort consumption data. Intergenerational altruism plays a major role in influencing how and, indeed, whether fiscal policy affects the economy and alters the intergenerational distribution of resources. All tests reject altruism, suggesting that intergenerational redistribution policies generate important net-wealth effects on aggregate demand, interest rates, and capital formation. The second chapter presents generational accounts for Italy, specifically the present value of remaining lifetime net taxes facing current and future generations. This chapter shows that current policies are unsustainable given Italys demographic transition and generous treatment of the elderly. Unless policies are changed in Italy, and soon, future generations will have to bear a very heavy fiscal burden compared to that facing current generations. Chapter three constructs the first generational accounts for five countries belonging to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, namely Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, the Russian Federation and Turkey. I show that Generational Accounting can be successfully carried out even with limited data. With the exceptions of the Russian Federation and Turkey, the generational imbalances are very large and are due, as in Italy, to the combination of population aging and substantial pension and healthcare transfers to the elderly. The final chapter focuses on the U.S. It considers how potential Social Security benefit cuts would impact the wellbeing of different American households. The chapter considers both stylized as well as actual households sampled from the 2004 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. The extent of living standard reductions in response to Social Security cuts depends critically on the age and the income of the household and on the size and the timing of the cuts.