Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Adam Carasso on Elderly

The inadequacy of the current U.S. public and private pension systems may warrant the establishment of a universal pension system (UPS), which would cover all workers—full-time and part-time—and require them to contribute at a level that can help provide them with adequate incomes when they retire. This paper develops options for a system of individual accounts to which, starting in 2007, each employee or self-employed worker would be required to contribute 3 percent of covered payroll (i.e., 3 percent of up to $97,500 in 2007). The UPS we describe would raise the total "replacement rate" for average wage men to 49.0 percent of final wages—provided Social Security is fixed—or 39.8 percent if not

"Investing in Children" tracks trends in federal investment from 1965 to 2017 for children as compared against the nation as a whole. This appendix details our data sources, the programs we include, and the methodology used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children.

This brief charts U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Relative to GDP or domestic spending, total investment and investment in children—under almost any definition—fell over the 1965–2006 period, though with some recent rebounds. More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption. These data raise the question of what relative priority the government should place on investment, and particularly investment in children.

We chart U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Five major categories can be considered -- some more so than others -- to be investment or to have investment components: education and research, work supports, social supports, physical capital, and defense investment. Relative to domestic spending, the most direct investment -- education and research -- for the nation as a whole, and crucially for children, fell over the 1970-2006 period though with some recent rebounds. More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption. These data raise the question of what relative priority the government should place on investment, and particularly investment in children.

This PowerPoint presentation accompanies the report "Kids' Share 2007: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget." It was presented at a briefing of the Hill staff on March 15, 2007 entitled, "Priority or Afterthought? Children and the Federal Budget." Download the PowerPoint presentation.

This study reports on trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017, looking across over 100 major federal programs, including tax credits and exemptions. Children's spending increasingly shifted from broad-based programs to programs targeting low-income or special needs children over the 1960 to 2006 period. Thirteen major programs enacted between 1960 and 2006, which include Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and Food Stamps, comprised 65 percent of federal spending on children in 2006. Overall, federal children's spending increased in real terms from $53 billion in 1960 to $333 billion in 2006, or from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Yet as a share of federal domestic spending, children's spending declined from 20.1 to 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, spending on the automatically growing, non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.6 percent of GDP ($58 billion to $993 billion) over the same time period. Over the next ten years, children's programs are scheduled to decline both as a share of GDP and domestic spending, because they do not compete on a level playing field with these rapidly growing entitlement programs.

"Kids' Share 2007: How Children Fare in the Federal Budget" tracks trends in federal spending on children from 1960 to 2017 by analyzing over 100 programs through which the federal government spends on children. This appendix lists our data sources, describes each program, and explains the methodology used to estimate the percentage of all expenditures that went to children.

Widening access to retirement savings vehicles and increasing the accumulations within these vehicles could help secure the future for many lower-income families. Currently, the role played by private pensions in asset building is small to nonexistent for most poor and lower-middle class workers. Instead, these persons rely primarily on Social Security and the savings in their home equity, if any, to sustain them in retirement. This brief, based on feedback from a roundtable of experts convened at the Urban Institute, provides background data on the assets of US households and discusses options for increasing levels of saving and retirement security for low- and moderate-income families.

To encourage saving for retirement, private pensions such as employer sponsored 401(k) plans or IRAs receive favorable tax treatment by the federal government. A major goal of such tax provisions is to increase personal saving. A measure of the value of these tax benefits is provided by the Treasury Department, and the National Income and Product Accounts contains a measure of personal saving. With the sudden drop in personal savings in 1999 and its steady decline in more recent recession years, government tax expenditures on pension benefits began to approach the personal savings level by the end of the 1990s.

This brief note describes the assumptions and methods behind the USA TODAY's Social Security and Medicare Lifetime Benefits Calculator, which uses tabulations produced by C. Eugene Steuerle and Adam Carasso of the Urban Institute.