Abstract
166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forces create and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? We document some of internationally and historically common features of Social Security programs including explicit and implicit taxes on labor supply, pay-as-you-go features, intergenerational redistribution, benefits which are increasing functions of lifetime earnings and not means-tested. We partition theories of Social Security into three groups: political, efficiency and narrative theories. We explore three political theories in this paper: majority rational voting model (with its two versions: the elderly as leaders of a winning coalition with poor and once and for all election model), time-intensive model of political competition and taxpayer protection model. Each of explanations is compared with international and historical facts. A companion paper explores efficiency and narrative theories, and derives implications of all theories for replacing typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan.
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