How Does the Personal Income Tax Affect the Progressivity of OASI Benefits?

Abstract

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Redistribution under the Social Security benefit formula at the individual and household levels, 1992 and 2004

“… 3 In analyzing the redistribution of old age benefits fostered by the current system, we consider the payroll tax, but not the income taxation of Social Security. In a paper written at the same time as the present paper, Coe et al (2011) do not find that income taxation of Social Security creates large changes in the measured progressivity of Social Security at the household level.…”

Distributional Effects of Means Testing Social Security: An Exploratory Analysis

“…2 See Gustman and Steinmeier (2001); Liebman (2002); Coronado, Fullerton and Glass (2011); Coe, Karamcheva, Kopcke and Munnell (2011); and Gustman, Steinmeier and Tabatabai (2013). These studies show that although the Social Security benefit formula is designed to redistribute benefits toward individuals with low lifetime earnings, there is much less redistribution of benefits at the household level than at the individual level, i.e., from households with high lifetime covered earnings to households with low covered earnings.…”