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Voting on Social Security: The Family as Decision‐Making Unit
Author(s) -
BREYER FRIEDRICH,
SCHULENBURG** J.MATTHIAS GRAF V. D.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6435.1987.tb00788.x
Subject(s) - voting , social security , pension , majority rule , democracy , opposition (politics) , demographic economics , economics , population , unit (ring theory) , public economics , political science , sociology , demography , psychology , law , finance , mathematics education , politics , market economy
SUMMARY In periods of demographic change, pay‐as‐you‐go financed social security systems imply transfers of lifetime income not only among generational cohorts, but also between families of different size and generational composition. Whereas previous models of voting on social security in democratic societies focused on the first type of transfer and assumed homogeneity of interests within each generation, we treat the family as the relevant decision‐making unit. It is then analyzed how the results of majority voting on public pension and sickness funds depend on the rate of time preference, the overall rate of population growth and the distribution of children across families. Not surprisingly, opposition to mandatory social security turns out to be greatest when children are most unevenly distributed.