Distributive Effects of Social Security and Pension Benefits
As the public debates the danger of the increasing federal deficit, social security is once again receiving public attention. Should the government de-emphasize social security and emphasize employer-provided pensions as a vehicle for providing retirement income? Before policymakers face this question, it is important to evaluate the role of these programs in shaping the level and the distribution of income among the retired. This article presents findings from a study based on the 1982 New Beneficiary Survey. The study found that, compared with employer-provided pension benefits, social security benefits not only assure a relatively higher level of income to economically disadvantaged demographic groups of recent retirees but also are significantly more effective in equalizing income distribution among a recent cohort of retirees. Policy implications are drawn from the study's findings.
RACIAL INEQUALITY IN MEN'S EMPLOYMENT AND RETIREMENT EARNINGS
Data from the New Beneficiary Study for currently married men who began receiving social security benefits in 1980–1981 indicate that the racial earnings gap is greater in retirement than it was in...
Looking for regional words in late seventeenth-century England: Bishop White Kennett and his glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695) 1
The analysis of regional dialects in the Early Modern period has commonly been disregarded in favour of an ample scholarly interest in the ‘authorised’ version of English which came to be eventually established as a standard. The history of regional ‘Englishes’ at this time still remains to a very great extent in oblivion, owing mainly to an apparent dearth of direct textual evidence which might provide trustworthy data. Research in this field has been for the most part focused on phonological, orthographical and morphological traits by virtue of the rather more abundant information that dialect testimonies yield about them. Regional lexical diversity has, on the contrary, deserved no special attention as uncertainty arises with regard to what was provincially restricted and what was not. This paper endeavours to offer additional data to the gloomy lexical setting of Early Modern regional English. It is our aim to give a descriptive account of the dialect words collated by Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695). This underutilised specimen does actually widen the information furnished by other well known canonical word-lists and provides concrete geographical data that might contribute to bridging the gaps still existing in the history of lexical provincialisms at the time.