Antisocial Security: The Puzzle of Beggar-Thy-Children Policies

The U.S. Social Security program has irrevocably transferred substantial wealth from workers to their ostensibly altruistic parents. After some alternative explanations for this paradox are addressed, a formal model is developed to show that a majority of rational voters who care about their descendants can support the preservation of current benefits for themselves but accept the prospect of Social Security's future retrenchment. Incorporating elements of Tabellini's (2000) positive theory of Social Security and Bénabou and Ok's (2001) analysis of income mobility, the model identifies specific forces affecting this time-varying individual support for Social Security. These forces are embodied in three hypotheses related to income mobility, relative income level, and age. An ordered logit analysis of cumulative ANES data supports these hypotheses.