Natasha Sarin's guest appearances

Natasha Sarin

Economics Detective Radio

Background Briefing with Ian Masters

Business Scholarship Podcast

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

Sarah Williams

Gret Glyer

Arlie Hochschild

Mark Thornton

Thomas Frank

Jonathan Morduch

Kurt Andersen

Michael McDonald

Lawrence Lessig

David Hill

Michael Mann

Martin Lawrence

Robert Wright

Adam Schiff

OwlTail

Lawrence Douglas

Victoria Nourse

Will Amy Coney Barrett Go Down in History as the "Typhoid Mary" of the Supreme Court? | How the IRS is Outgunned and How to Make the Rich Pay Their Taxes | The Author of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown of 2020backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Will Amy Coney Barrett Go Down in History as the "Typhoid Mary" of the Supreme Court? | How the IRS is Outgunned and How to Make the Rich Pay Their Taxes | The Author of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown of 2020 <a href="http://backgroundbriefing.org/donate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">backgroundbriefing.org/donate</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/ianmastersmedia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/ianmastersmedia</a> <a href="http://facebook.com/ianmastersmedia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">facebook.com/ianmastersmedia</a>

October 5, 2020 - Victoria Nourse | Natasha Sarin | Lawrence Douglas

Sylvain Catherine

Today's guests are Sylvain Catherine and Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss their research on wealth inequality, specifically with respect to social security's impact on calculated wealth inequality. When you account for the value of all future payroll taxes into Social Security and all future benefit payments from Social Security, the present value of that stream of payments accounts for a large fraction of the wealth held by the bottom 90% of households. Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S., based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper revisits this conclusion by incorporating Social Security retirement benefits into measures of wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has not increased in the last three decades when Social Security is accounted for. When discounted at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth increased substantially from $5.6 trillion in 1989 to just over $42.0 trillion in 2016. When we adjust for systematic risk coming from the covariance of Social Security returns with the market portfolio, this increase remains sizable, growing from over $4.6 trillion in 1989 to $34.0 trillion in 2016. Consequently, by 2016, Social Security wealth represented 58% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution. Redistribution through programs like Social Security increases the progressivity of the economy, and it is important that our estimates of wealth concentration reflect this.

Today's guests are Sylvain Catherine and Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss their research on wealth inequality, specifically with respect to social security's impact on calculated wealth inequality. When you account for the value of all future payroll taxes into Social Security and all future benefit payments from Social Security, the present value of that stream of payments accounts for a large fraction of the wealth held by the bottom 90% of households. Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S., based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper revisits this conclusion by incorporating Social Security retirement benefits into measures of wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has not increased in the last three decades when Social Security is accounted for. When discounted at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth increased substantially from $5.6 trillion in 1989 to just over $42.0 trillion in 2016. When we adjust for systematic risk coming from the covariance of Social Security returns with the market portfolio, this increase remains sizable, growing from over $4.6 trillion in 1989 to $34.0 trillion in 2016. Consequently, by 2016, Social Security wealth represented 58% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution. Redistribution through programs like Social Security increases the progressivity of the economy, and it is important that our estimates of wealth concentration reflect this.

Social Security and Wealth Inequality with Sylvain Catherine and Natasha Sarin

Natasha Sarin, assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her recent article Making Consumer Finance Work. Sarin analyzes the outcomes of three Dodd-Frank era reforms to explain when regulatory interventions work, when they lead to "whack-a-mole," and how the less wealthy subsidize other consumers in consumer finance markets. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

<a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/nsarin/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Natasha Sarin</a>, assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, joins the <a href="https://andrewkjennings.com/podcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Business Scholarship Podcast</a> to discuss her recent article <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3328607" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Making Consumer Finance Work</a>. Sarin analyzes the outcomes of three Dodd-Frank era reforms to explain when regulatory interventions work, when they lead to "whack-a-mole," and how the less wealthy subsidize other consumers in consumer finance markets. This episode is hosted by <a href="https://andrewkjennings.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andrew Jennings</a>, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Ep.11 – Natasha Sarin on Making Consumer Finance Work