An Ex-Ante Evaluation of the Impact of Social Insurance Policies on Labor Supply in Brazil : The Case for Explicit Over Implicit Redistribution
This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the income protection and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend ou...
Main Authors: | , , , |
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Format: | Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/07/20170398/ex-ante-evaluation-impact-social-insurance-policies-labor-supply-brazil-case-explicit-over-implicit-redistribution http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20196 |
Summary: | This paper solves and estimates a
stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to
assess how changes in the design of the income protection
and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates,
the share of time that individuals spend outside of the
formal sector, and retirement decisions. Dynamics depend on
five main parameters: preferences regarding consumption and
leisure, preferences regarding formal Vs. informal work,
attitudes towards risks, the rate of time preference, and
the distributions of two exogenous shocks that affect
movements in and out of the social security system
(independently of individual decisions). The yearly
household survey is used to create a pseudo panel by
age-cohorts and estimate the joint distribution of model
parameters based on a generalized version of the Gibbs
sampler. The model does a good job in replicating the
distribution of the members of the cohort across states (in
or out of them social security / active or retired). Because
the parameters are related to individual preferences or
exogenous shocks, the joint distribution is unlikely to
change when the social insurance system changes. Thus, the
model is used to explore how alternative policy
interventions could affect behaviors and through this
channel benefit levels and fiscal costs. The results from
various simulations provide three main insights: (i) the
Brazilian SI system today might generate unnecessary
distortions (lower savings rates, less formal employment,
and more early retirement) that increase the costs of the
system and might generate regressive redistribution; (ii)
there are important interactions between the income
protection and pension systems, which calls for joint policy
analysis when considering reforms; and (iii) current
distortions could be reduced by creating an actuarial link
between contributions and benefits and then giving matching
contributions or matching capital to individuals with
limited savings capacity, which requires having individual
savings accounts that can be funded or notional. |
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