A critique of the Urban Institute's claims of cost free immigration: Early findings confirmed

This text addresses the critiques from the Urban Institute and other immigrant advocacy groups concerning the findings of an earlier study, The Cost of Immigration released in the summer of 1993. That study showed that the public costs associated withimmigrants settling here since 1970 amounted, in 1992, to $42.5 billion more in services and assistance than the $20.2 billion which immigrants paid in taxes (Huddle, 1993). The updated assessment takes into account previously unavailable figures and revises some methods and assumptions used in the earlier work. The updated bottom line is fully consistent with initial findings on immigrant costs for 1992.     

Statistical Security for Social Security

The financial viability of Social Security, the single largest U.S. government program, depends on accurate forecasts of the solvency of its intergenerational trust fund. We begin by detailing information necessary for replicating the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) forecasting procedures, which until now has been unavailable in the public domain. We then offer a way to improve the quality of these procedures via age- and sex-specific mortality forecasts. The most recent SSA mortality forecasts were based on the best available technology at the time, which was a combination of linear extrapolation and qualitative judgments. Unfortunately, linear extrapolation excludes known risk factors and is inconsistent with long-standing demographic patterns, such as the smoothness of age profiles. Modern statistical methods typically outperform even the best qualitative judgments in these contexts. We show how to use such methods, enabling researchers to forecast using far more information, such as the known risk factors of smoking and obesity and known demographic patterns. Including this extra information makes a substantial difference. For example, by improving only mortality forecasting methods, we predict three fewer years of net surplus, $730 billion less in Social Security Trust Funds, and program costs that are 0.66% greater for projected taxable payroll by 2031 compared with SSA projections. More important than specific numerical estimates are the advantages of transparency, replicability, reduction of uncertainty, and what may be the resulting lower vulnerability to the politicization of program forecasts. In addition, by offering with this article software and detailed replication information, we hope to marshal the efforts of the research community to include ever more informative inputs and to continue to reduce uncertainties in Social Security forecasts.     

Major Natural Catastrophes, 1950–2001

The organizations with most interest in recording worldwide disaster statistics are humani‐tarian agencies such as the International Red Cross (see its annual World Disasters Report) and the large reinsurance companies. The latter are likely to be more meticulous. The data and the brief text below come from an annual report on natural disasters, Topics 2001, issued in March 2002 by Munich Reinsurance Company (more familiarly known as Munich Re), and are reproduced by permission. The trend in economic losses from “great catastrophes” (those requiring interregional or international assistance) over the last 50 years is strongly upward, as shown in the annual statistics and decadal comparisons. Both total losses and insured losses have been rising, the latter more sharply. An implication is that insurance premiums calculated on the basis of historical experience will underestimate future risks. The trend in disasters mainly results from greater exposure to risk through thegrowth of economies and populations rather than from changes in natural hazards themselves. One exception noted in the report is an increasing likelihood of “extreme precipitation” during hurricanes and other windstorms, which may be associated with global warming‐a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. (There is no consensus on whether the frequency or intensity of storms is increasing, but there is evidence that they are getting wetter.) Greater allowance will have to be made for flood damage: Hurricane Andrew in the United States in 1992, causing a record $30 billion in estimated total losses, was a relatively “dry” storm‐ and it missed Miami and New Orleans. Munich Re describes 2001 as an “average year” for natural disasters, with an estimated 25,000 fatalities worldwide and total economic losses of some $36 billion. The four events during the year classed as great catastrophes were an earthquake and landslides in El Salvador in January, killing 845 persons; a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Gujarat in the same month, killing more than 14,000; a hailstorm in Kansas City in April, killing no one but costing the insurance industry $2 billion; and Tropical Storm Allison in June, in which 72 m of rain over 12 hoursjlooded Houston, Texas, causing about $6 billion in total losses‐ “the costliest non‐hurricane of all time.” A recurrent concern of Topics 2001 is the problem of what are termed unidentified loss potentials. These are low‐risk but high‐loss events, exemplified by the 1999 Taiwan earth‐quake, which had an estimated return period of 10,000–100.000 years (or, more exotically, by the remote chance but catastrophic eflect o f a large meteorite impact‐the subject of one section of the report). Other kinds of hard‐to‐calculate loss potentials are related to unanticipated chains of events leading to or following from a disaster. The September terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center, although unambiguously man‐made and thus not treated in the report, has been a further stimulus to wide‐angled thinking on loss potentials. It demonstrates the broad scope of worst‐case scenarios that now have to be considered by under‐writers who must seek to eliminate “the ‘bare patches’ on the ‘risk landscape.’” The full report is available online at http://www.munichre.com/pdf/topics~2001‐e.pdf     

Evaluating the performance of the lee-carter method for forecasting mortality

Lee and Carter (LC) published a new statistical method for forecasting mortality in 1992. This paper examines its actual and hypothetical forecast errors, and compares them with Social Security forecast errors. Hypothetical historical projections suggest that LC tended to underproject gains, but by less than did Social Security. True e0 was within the ex ante 95% probability interval 97% of the time overall, but intervals were too broad up to 40 years and too narrow after 50 years. Projections to 1998 made after 1945 always contain errors of less than two years. Hypothetical projections for France, Sweden, Japan, and Canada would have done well. Changing age patterns of mortality decline over the century pose problems for the method.     

Retirement against the demographic trend: More older people living longer, working less, and saving less?

The American population is aging rapidly and individuals are living longer. Yet Americans are saving less and older workers are leaving the labor force at younger and younger ages. The accelerated drop in labor force participation corresponds roughly to the introduction of Social Security and the adaption of employer-provided pension plans. I have illustrated that Social Security and employer-provided pension plans provide substantial incentive to leave the labor force early. The quantitative effect of this inducement is illustrated by simulating the effects of changes in pension plan and Social Security provisions on the retirement decisions of employees in a large firm, who are covered by a typical defined benefit pension plan. Scheduled Social Security changes would have little effect on the retirement decisions of employees with a typical defined benefit pension plan like the one considered here. But if the pension plan provisions were changed to correspond to the Social Security changes, the effect would be very large. And, although not contemplated by current legislation, it is clear that an increase in the Social Security early retirement age would have a substantial effect on the early retirement rates of the large number of employees not covered by a pension plan.     

A special section for correspondence and controversy

Summary The programs described above cost the state about $1 billion. Other state costs (which are not my responsibility) are incarceration costs for illegals, $400 million. Education cost for children of illegals has been estimated to be $1.7 billion this year. These two alone equal $2.1 billion.Please accept my assurances, and those of Governor Wilson, that we in the administration are not xenophobic or nativistic.I do not know if 8.6 million persons is a reasonable number for our nation of 250 million plus to accept and assimilate. I am convinced that 4.3 million is too many for a single state of 30 million to assimilate effectively. Certainly the costs of doing so are beyond our capacity to absorb without help.I am convinced that our existing assimilation ability is hamstrung by federal practice that ignores our immigration laws by permitting an unchecked flow of illegal immigrants into our country. Over half of this population enters and resides in California.The problem is exacerbated by the almost total failure of the federal government to support itslegal immigration decisions with federal funds to offset the costs of the resultant influx of immigrants.Presented at the Pacific Research Institute Conference on immigration, San Francisco, CA, April 25, 1994.     

Unemployment and earnings for second generation immigrants in Sweden. Ethnic background and parent composition

This study sheds light on the labour market outcomes of children born to immigrants in the destination country, i.e. second generation immigrants. The study has the advantage of being able to (i) identify several different ethnic backgrounds and (ii) identify the parent composition, i.e. whether one or both parents of the individual are foreign born. The labour market outcomes of second generation immigrants mirror those of first generation immigrants in that we find heterogeneity in labour market outcomes to be associated with ethnic background. Moreover, these outcomes, especially for Southern and non-European backgrounds, are much worse than those for native-born with a Swedish background. Finally, the outcome is more favourable if one parent is born in Sweden compared to having both parents foreign born, especially if the mother is native born.All Correspondence to Dan-Olof Rooth. We are grateful for several helpful comments and suggestions from two anonymous referees. A research grant from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Externalities of air pollution: Estimates for heart diseases

This study attempts to establish a quantitative relationship between air pollution and heart diseases. It proposes that in addition to air pollution, population density, sunshine, racial composition, age composition, and income are important variables to explain the variations in the death rates due to heart diseases in the urban areas of the United States. The analysis suggests that a fifty percent decrease in the air pollution would imply a decrease in the mortality rate by about 24–35 percent. Such a reduction in the air pollution level would be accompanied by a social savings of the order of $2140 to $3130 million per year in terms of the heart diseases only. Social savings in terms of all diseases would obviously be of a much higher order.     

Air pollution and the respiratory disease mortality in the United States—a quantitative study

This paper establishes a quantitative relationship between respiratory mortality rates and the level of air pollution and other socio-economic variables using a macro-model. With the help of regression analysis it is observed that a hundred per cent increase in the air pollution would imply an increase in the respiratory diseases mortality rate by 51–58%. A reduction of about fifty per cent in the air pollution would imply a social savings of the order of about $1.9–$2.17 billion per year in terms of respiratory diseases alone.     

Social security reforms and poverty among older dual-earner couples

Existing retirement studies have, in the main, focused only on labor supply decisions of couples in which the husband has been the sole earner. This paper extends the focus of analysis to examine retirement among dual-earner couples. It further develops a framework for assessing how several past and prospective Social Security reforms might be expected to affect older working couples' retirement ages and retirement incomes. Two questions are addressed in some detail: (1) What are the likely effects of various changes in Social Security rules on the retirement decisions of older working women and their husbands? and (2) How might these changes alter the incidence of poverty among retired dual-earner couples? Empirical evidence from the United States suggests that many benefit reforms currently being discussed in policy circles will enhance Social Security system revenues, but will also worsen the economic status of an important segment of dual-earner couples.     

Cohort,age, and period effects upon the employment of white females: Evidence for 1957–1968

The net effects of birth cohort, age, and period upon the employment of white women, 1957–1968, are estimated by a regression analysis of data from the Social Security Administration’s continuous work history file. By conceptualizing period-specific effects as those associated with the business cycle, we avoid multicollinearity and succeed in performing an analysis faithful to the cohort concerns usual in fertility analysis and to the macroeconomic concerns usual in employment studies. The age pattern of employment and the pattern of intercohort employment change are examined in some detail. The long-run (cohort) trend of increasing white female employment is compared with the estimated (short-run) effects attributable to the business cycle, and it is found that, while both are significant, the former exerted a stronger effect in the 1957–1968 period.     

Mobility,Stagnation, or Attrition? Diverse Earning Trajectories in a Cohort of Foreign‐born Men

Researchers and policymakers frequently debate about the integration of immigrants into the US economy. These debates are often based on limited data that do not capture the diversity of immigrants who arrived in the later twentieth century. Related research has also struggled to incorporate the experience of short‐term immigrants or immigrants who move in and out of the labor force. Using records from the Social Security Administration, we track the complete cohort of foreign‐born men who received social security numbers in 1978 through their subsequent working years and characterize their earning trajectories. We find that the share of foreign‐born men with low earnings declined over time, mainly due to attrition from the formal labor force. We also show, for the first time, that immigrants’ employment and earning histories vary considerably by their countries of origin: while those from several countries in Asia and Africa experienced substantial earnings growth and tended to stay in the United States for the long term, men from Central America and the Caribbean experienced more stagnation and had high levels of temporary and permanent attrition from the formal labor force. We end by discussing the historical contingencies and socioeconomic contexts—in sending countries and the United States—that shaped these trajectories.     

未来北京市社会保障基金问题研究

本文根据未来北京市劳动力人口的变动情况,估算了“十一五”期间全市社会保障各个子项目的基金缺口,指出最紧迫需要补充的资金在150亿元左右。鉴于此,北京市社会保障体系应坚持“效率优先,兼顾公平”的全国性原则,以基金积累制为主,尽快引入社会保障风险准备金制度,以率先实现“应保尽保”。根据北京市社会保障的地方特色和资金缺口的规模,我们设计了各子项目的资金来源,并探讨了北京市社保基金的增值目标、投资结构和运作管理。     

城镇企业职工基本养老保险基金支付能力预测研究

随着人口老龄化进程的加剧。我国城镇企业职工基本养老保险基金收支出现了巨大缺口并呈现逐步扩大的趋势,导致基金支付能力持续下降。本文应用社会保障精算方法与技术,以社会养老保险现行政策为导向。引入2005年颁布的《国务院关于完善企业职工基本养老保险制度的决定》中新养老金计发办法的经济参数。构建城镇企业职工基本养老保险基金收入与基金支出测算模型,其中以2006年新政策实施年为时间界限。分别构建“老人”、2006年前退休的“中人”（“老中人”）、2006年后退休的“中人”（“新中人”）、“新人”四类群体的基本养老保险基金支出洲算模型。从而推导出城镇企业职工基本养老保险基金支付能力预测精算模型。以期对养老保险基金失衡风险和支竹能力危机进行及时预测。并为社会养老保险政策调整和制度完善提供量化依据。     

Political legitimacy versus economic imperatives in system transformation: Hungary and East Germany 1990–93

East European policy makers currently face critical trade-offs between economic imperatives and system legitimacy imperatives. Economic imperatives, derived from the goal of medium term prosperity, demand rapid privatization and marketization. System legitimacy imperatives demand measures to minimize the unemployment, wage cuts and income inequality resulting in the short term from privatization and marketization. In 1989–90 East Germany and Hungary appeared to face the least harsh trade-offs and to be best placed of the ex-communist countries to achieve successful system transformation. Unlike their East European neighbours, neither had to develop democratic and market institutions from scratch. East Germany would import the Federal Republic's political system and market institutions. Hungary already had organized political parties and had been developing market institutions since 1968. Using panel survey data, the paper shows that, despite considerable economic achievements since 1990, there is widespread personal dissatisfaction and distress, and the legitimacy of democratic and market institutions is weak. The main data sources are the Hungarian Socio-Economic Panel (1992–5777 individuals in 2888 households) and the East German segment of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990–4453 individuals in 2179 households).     

Measuring socioeconomic mortality differentials over time

Using 1973 Current Population Survey data matched to 1973-1978 Social Security mortality records, this study measures the relationship between the income and education of men and their subsequent mortality. The estimated relationships are compared with socioeconomic mortality differentials found by Kitagawa and Hauser in their study of 1960 census-death certificate matched data. The comparison suggests that there has been no improvement in the relative mortality experience of low socioeconomic status men. More generally, the article discusses how Social Security data could be used to monitor, on a continual basis, our progress toward eradicating significant mortality differentials in the United States.     

Married women's retirement behavior

In this paper we examine the economic and family determinants of married women's retirement behavior. A life cycle model of wives' retirement decisions is tested empirically using data on working married women from the Longitudinal Retirement History Survey. This exploratory analysis indicates that family considerations are more important in wives' retirement decisions than own economic opportunities. These findings contrast with those obtained previously for male workers and if substantiated by other research could have important implications for policy questions regarding pension and Social Security reform.This research was funded by the 1986–7 Small Grants Program sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty, the Cornell Institute of Social and Economic Research, and the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Excellent programming assistance was provided by Vivian Fields. We are grateful to Glen Cain and two anonymous referees for useful comments. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not those of the above-named persons or institutions.     

#wheresRey: feminism,protest, and merchandising sexism in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The blockbuster film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) earned over $2 billion dollars at the box-office worldwide and became a cultural phenomenon. Produced by media giant Disney, The Force Awakens also generated huge merchandising sales and earned over $9 billion within a year. The film’s main protagonist, Rey, was heralded as a strong, feminist-influenced heroine that capably carved her own space within the male dominated Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, the inherent sexism of the film’s marketing strategy meant that Rey was excluded from the merchandising line. Consumers protested Rey’s absence and demonstrated the importance of popular culture within the realm of political protests about gender equality and commercialization, ultimately leading to industrial and social change.     

Post-1969 Immigration and the Example of the Insolvency of the Social Security System

Advocates of immigration to save Social Security (S.S.) assume that a pay-as-you-go system will work over the long run. That assumption is not shared by the Social Security Board of Trustees. Reflection shows that it would entail ever-larger new cohorts of immigrants to support those who are retiring, in effect, a Ponzi scheme. In fact, the benefits structure of the S.S. system, which pays out proportionately more to low-wage earners than to high-wage earners relative to their contributions, taken together with the income profile of post-1969 immigrants, means that the more immigration which occurs, the deeper into insolvency the system falls.     

1992~2002年中国老年人生活自理能力变化研究

基于1992年中国老年人供养体系调查和2002年中国老年人健康长寿第三期调查,本文对中国老年人1992~2002年生活自理能力的变化进行了探讨。结果显示1992~2002年十年间中国老年人生活自理能力失能率平均年下降l%。其平均年下降率具有如下特点:高龄老人高于中低龄老人;城镇老人高于农村老人;男性老人高于女性老人;非文盲老人高于文盲老人;有配偶老人高于无配偶老人。