The Wage Gap and Public Support for Social Security
构建理论框架，分析人口老龄化和教育回报率如何通过政治经济机制影响税率和转移支付慷慨度，并用美欧十国面板数据提供实证支持。
Faced with aging populations, tax rates on labor income rose in most industrial countries in the 1970's and 1980's, in large part to fund burgeoning social-security systems. The growth of the welfare state coincided with increased returns to education, and thus broader wage differentials between workers with relatively high levels of skills or education and those without. This paper provides a theoretical framework which connects these phenomena. We show that the aging of the population and the return to education both affect the politicaleconomy determination of tax rates and the generosity of transfers in a democratic framework. Using panel data on the United States and nine European countries, we provide supportive empirical evidence.