Mark Duggan Presents 2026 Martin Feldstein Lecture

Mark Duggan, who is currently the Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics at Stanford University and will soon be taking up a new role as Dean of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, presented the 2026 Martin Feldstein Lecture on July 29th. His lecture on “Social Security Reform in an Era of Fiscal Deficits” identified the policy choices over the last fifty years that have resulted in a chronic gap between Social Security benefit payments and payroll taxes that finance them. The gap is currently met by drawing down the Social Security Trust Fund, but it is projected to be exhausted within the next decade. After describing the fiscal challenges currently facing the Social Security system, Duggan outlined a number of policy levers, including raising the payroll tax rate, reducing benefits to eligible beneficiaries, expanding the taxable wage base, and raising the retirement age—that could, in various combinations, bring the system closer to long-run fiscal balance. The Feldstein Lecture Series was launched in 2009 to celebrate the late Martin Feldstein's three decades of transformative leadership of the NBER.