TY  - JOUR
AU  - Green,Jerry R.
TI  - Mitigating Demographic Risk Through Social Insurance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 215
PY  - 1977
Y2  - November 1977
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0215
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0215.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jerry R. Green
Harvard Business School
Baker Library 469
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Tel: 617/495-6859
E-Mail: jgreen@hbs.edu
AB  - A two-period lifetime overlapping generations growth model is used to evaluate the possibility that social insurance can effectively offset economic risks associated with uncertainty about the rate of population growth. Crude measures of the seriousness of this type of risk in the current United States situation are presented. Sufficient conditions on the structure of the economy for such intergenerational risk pooling to be mutually beneficial to all members of society are derived. Although it is logically possible to satisfy them1 we argue that they are unlikely to be realized empirically in an economy similar to that of the United States. Because of this failure, some more complex types of policy options are also discussed.
ER  -