Lifetime Earning and Heterogeneity in Retirement Wealth: the Role of Bequests, Minimum Consumption, and Social Security

Fang Yang

Discussion Papers from University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics

Abstract: The data show large dispersion in household's wealth holding at retirement. In addition, the empirical correlation between household lifetime earnings and retirement wealth is much lower in the data than in many quantitative models. This paper quantifies and analyzes the implications of a life cycle model with intergenerational links (in the form of voluntary bequest motives and intergenerational transmission of ability) that also explicitly allows for defined benefit pensions, history-dependent social security, and a government-provided minimum consumption floor. The key finding is that this model goes a long way toward matching the observed wealth differences at retirement and their correlation with lifetime incomes.

Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem and nep-dge
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.albany.edu/economics/research/workingp/2012/retirementWealth30.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.albany.edu/economics/research/workingp/2012/retirementWealth30.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.albany.edu/economics/research/workingp/2012/retirementWealth30.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nya:albaec:12-03

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Department of Economics, Building 25, Room 103 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A.
http://www.albany.ed ... workingp/index.shtml

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Building 25, Room 103 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 U.S.A..
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Byoung Park ().