A Model of Social Security and Retirement Decisions

The purpose of the present paper is to focus on the potential inducement to retire earlier in the presence of social security and on the implied effects on lifetime savings. This problem is analyzed within the framework of a model of intertemporal utility maximization. The organization of this work is as follows. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 presents the model of individual optimization and of the market equilibrium. Sections 3 through 5 present the comparative statistics analysis. Section 3 evaluates the effects on the equilibrium retirement age, section 4 modifies the benefits formula to depend on retirement age and section 5 examines the wealth-income ratio effect. Section 6 introduces the intergenerational transfer problem. Section 7 presents the general model underlying the previous sections.