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Center for Economic Policy Analysis Center for Economic Policy Analysis

Center for Economic Policy Analysis at UC San Diego:
Initiative on Entitlement Program Reform

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Research Affiliates

Jeffrey Clemens
Jeffrey Clemens
Associate Professor
Julie Cullen
Julie Cullen
Professor
Gordon Dahl
Professor

 

Itzik Fadlon
Associate Professor
Alex Gelber
Associate Professor

About the Initiative on Entitlement Program Reform

Entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security perform vital social insurance functions, yet are also central to the unsustainable fiscal path on which the U.S. federal government is currently set. The 2024 report of the Social Security Trustees forecasts that the combined trust fund reserves of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance programs will be exhausted by 2035, such that these programs would, absent action from Congress, be unable to pay the full benefits to which beneficiaries are otherwise entitled. The 2024 report of the Medicare Trustees similarly forecast 2036 as the depletion date for the Hospital Insurance trust fund.

Balancing fiscal sustainability with a desire for generous health coverage, disability insurance, and old-age pension benefits requires attending carefully to both the benefits and distortions to which these programs give rise, as well as to demographic trends and forecasts for economic growth. Research under the Initiative on Entitlement Reform thus speaks to issues including:

  • Impacts of social insurance benefits on beneficiaries’ health and financial well-being.
  • Impacts of social insurance benefits on labor supply.
  • The effects of increasing the age at which benefits can be claimed on outcomes including labor supply, saving, and financial well-being.
  • Implications of transitioning federal support for state Medicaid programs from matching grants to block grants.
  • Implications of Medicare payment reductions for the supply of services, overall medical price inflation, and economy-wide inflation.

Faculty Research Spotlights

Two red armchairs on top of a pier overlooking a lakeItzik Fadlon’s research has analyzed the interplay between household labor supply and Social Security Survivor’s benefits in research published in the American Economic Review (joint with David Coyne, Shanthi P. Ramnath, and Patricia K. Tong). In earlier work (joint with Torben Heien Nielsen) published in the Journal of Public Economics, he showed how household labor supply responses to benefit-triggering shocks can be used to assess the welfare implications of existing social insurance arrangement. Itzik’s research on the persistence of retirement timing relative to the timing of benefits-claiming was recently published in the Review of Economics and Statistics (joint with Manasi Deshpande and Colin Gray). His research on the role of employers in designing retirement benefits that reflect their employees’ preferences (joint with Jessica Laird and Torben Heien Nielsen) has been published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

A medical mask in front of American flag motifsAlex Gelber’s research has helped to develop empirical methods and develop findings on the effects of major social insurance programs on beneficiaries’ labor market participation and overall well-being.  Alex helped to develop methods for assessing the importance of frictions that inhibit labor market adjustments in research published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (joint with Damon Jones, and Daniel W. Sacks).  In a related paper (joint with Damon Jones, Daniel W. Sacks, and Jae Song) published in the Journal of Human Resources, Alex analyzed the employment effects of the Social Security earnings test. Alex has also published research in the Journal of Political Economy on the impacts of disability insurance benefits on the health of program beneficiaries (joint with Timothy Moore and Alexander Strand). Related work published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy has addressed the effects of the disability insurance program on labor market participation (also joint with Timothy Moore and Alexander Strand). From 2012 to 2013, Alex served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, and from 2018-2019 he served on the Social Security Advisory Board Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods.

A doctor holding an empty pill bottle in one hand and American currency in the otherJeffrey (Jeff) Clemens has studied the implications of a number of core dimensions of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. His work on the effects of physician payments on the supply of services has been published in the American Economic Review (joint with Joshua Gottlieb) and his work on the effects of the Medicare program’s physician payments on the contracts negotiated between physicians and private insurers has been published in the Journal of Political Economy (joint with Joshua Gottlieb) and in the Journal of Health Economics (joint with Joshua Gottlieb and Timea Molnar). This line of research has also informed two policy-oriented analyses (joint with Joshua Gottlieb and Adam Shapiro) of the effects of Medicare’s payment changes on medical price inflation and overall price inflation. In a pair of papers for the NBER’s Tax Policy and the Economy series, he has studied the implications of Medicaid financing reforms for state government budgets (joint with Benedic Ippolito) and the implications of Medicare payment changes for long-run care access among Medicare, Medicaid, and privately insured populations (joint with Joshua Gottlieb and Jeffrey Hicks).

American currency next to an hourglass that is pouring downGordon Dahl’s research on the effects of workplace peers and siblings on social insurance program participation (joint with Katrine Loken and Magne Mogstad) has been published in the American Economic Review. His research on the intergenerational transmission of participation in welfare or social insurance programs has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (joint with Andres Kostol and Magne Mogstad) and the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (joint with Anne Gielen). His work on inequality in life expectancy (joint with Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Torben Heien Nielsen, and Benjamin Ly Serena) has been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Research by Current Students and Graduate Program Alumni

Ongoing Projects

  • Itzik Fadlon continues his research on entitlement programs in the US with two ongoing projects. One project studies the value of formal care provided to older American households by Medicare. Another project aims to investigate whether more generous unemployment benefits can impact the increases in crime that follow job loss during recessions.

  • Alex Gelber continues his research on the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program, as well as on the impacts of government programs on the labor market.

  • Jeffrey Clemens continues his research on the effects of Medicare’s payment policies on the supply side of the health sector.

  • Gordon Dahl continues his research on intergenerational links, with recent work examining whether social program participation has impacts that extend through three generations. He is also researching how reductions in the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits affect employment and starting salaries.