Abstract With looming fiscal pressure from an aging population, policy makers must grapple with the question of how to restore solvency to the Social Security budget. At this crossroads, it seems wise to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in making people better off. Specifically, we survey four decades of economic theory to examine Social Security as a potential solution to underutilized, missing, or incomplete markets. We synthesize and highlight the ways in which the program improves wellbeing through mandatory saving and collective risk‐sharing, as well as the ways in which behavioral responses of individuals may unwind or even over‐turn the welfare gains of the program.
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