The Polarization of Personal Saving

Marina Gindelsky and Robert Martin

Review of Income and Wealth, 2025, vol. 71, issue 1

Abstract: The Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics have constructed the first complete distribution of personal saving (2004–2022) for the U.S. by estimating the joint distribution of disposable personal income and personal consumption expenditures. We start with household surveys, augmented with administrative sources, to correct for suspected underreporting in the distribution tails. We then scale household values to national accounts totals and calculate the resulting distribution of personal saving, extending existing distributional national accounts for the U.S. While aggregate saving is 3% of personal income in 2022, it is negative for the bottom half of the distribution. In fact, consumption expenditures are more than double income for the bottom 10%, but almost six times less than income for the top 1%. Despite a temporary increase in saving during the COVID pandemic, the polarization is large and persistent, and robust to modifying the definitions and sample composition.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.70004

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:bla:revinw:v:71:y:2025:i:1:n:e70004

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0034-6586

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill

More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().