Welfare Effects of Balancing the Federal Social Security and Health Care Budgets

描述(由申请人提供)：我们将通过一个可计算的动态随机一般均衡(CGE)模型来模拟社会保障和医疗保险政策变化的福利影响。我们汇集了CGE关于社会保障和医疗保险的许多文献；将它们结合在一个单一模型中是非常创新的，并提供了更现实和可靠的政策分析的前景。我们将对包括残疾在内的医疗保险和社会保障改革进行建模，同时允许两者之间的协同效应。我们会明确表示 允许行为过于短期的有限理性消费者，允许利他主义和家庭成员之间的转移。我们将考虑宏观经济、人口和卫生技术冲击以及保险市场缺失的总体情况。最重要的是，我们将结合政策变化的收入和健康影响建立整体福利模型，为每项政策提供总体福利衡量标准，并按队列、教育水平和初始健康状况给出人口亚组的福利影响。我们的具体目标是：1构建和校准一个包含联邦社会保障和医疗保健政策的美国经济综合可计算动态随机一般均衡(CGE)模型，并估计各种政策情景对收入、消费、健康和经济增长的影响，以平衡它们的预算；目标2利用该模型的结果来估计不同政策情景的福利影响。我们将根据队列、教育程度和初始健康状况来估计总体福利和子组的福利。有待检验的假设：我们将对照一个基准测试政策选项，该基准通过逐步减少福利和增加缴费来平衡预算：假设1迅速采取行动，为未来的义务提供全额资金，可以提供更高的福利，而在平衡预算之前，长期的债务融资会降低福利。假设2：逐步提高医疗保险和社会保障的福利水平是福利的改善，这是由于收入的增加和更好的卫生技术，尽管需要更高的资金。假设3：允许大量高技能工人移民的政策将有助于平衡总体预算，并在健康和经济结果方面改善福利。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We will model the welfare effects of policy changes to social Security and Medicare through a computable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (CGE) model. We bring together many strands of the CGE literature on Social Security and Medicare; combining them in a single model is highly innovative and gives the prospect of more realistic and reliable policy analysis. We will model both Medicare and Social Security, including disability, reforms at the same time allowing for synergies between the effects. We will explicitly allow for bounded rational consumers who are overly short term in their behavior and for altruism and transfers between family members. We will take into account aggregate macroeconomic, demographic, and health technology shocks and missing insurance markets. Most importantly we will model overall welfare combining the income and health effects of policy changes to give both an aggregate welfare measure for each policy and the welfare effects of population subgroups by cohort, education level, and initial health status. Our Specific Aims are: Aim 1 to construct and calibrate an integrated computable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (CGE) model of the United States economy with both Federal Social Security and health care policies and estimate the effects on income, consumption, health, and economic growth of various policy scenarios that will lead to balancing their budgets, and Aim 2 to use the outcomes of the model to estimate the welfare effects of different policy scenarios. We will estimate both aggregate welfare and the welfare of subgroups by cohort, education, and initial health state. Hypotheses to be tested: We will test policy options against a benchmark which balances the budget through a gradual reduction in benefits and increase in contributions: Hypothesis 1 Moving quickly to fully fund future obligations gives higher welfare while a long period of debt financing before balancing the budget lowers welfare. Hypothesis 2: Gradually increasing the benefit levels of both Medicare and Social Security are welfare-improving due to rising incomes and better health technologies despite the higher required financing. Hypothesis 3: A policy of allowing immigration by a large number of high- skilled workers would contribute to balancing the overall budget and be welfare-improving in terms of health and economic outcomes.