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Since its inception the Social Security system has engaged in resource transfers of three kinds, intergenerational, intragenerational, and intertemporal. Transfer of resources across generations, the consumption loan feature of the system, began in 1939 with the payment of benefits to elderly citizens who had paid little or nothing into the system. The 1939 and subsequent amendments to the Social Security Act also weakened the link between taxes paid and benefits received within generations. Within a generation, dependent and surviving widow and widower benefits lead to resource transfers from single to married households and from two-earner households to single earner households. The third resource transfer, the intertemporal transfer, involves simply a reduction in resources when young due to Social Security taxation and an increase in resources when old, the receipt of Social Security benefits. The …