Saving behaviour and earnings uncertainty: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

Alessandra Guariglia

Journal of Population Economics, 2001, vol. 14, issue 4, 619-634

Abstract: For the first time, this paper uses a panel data set, the British Household Panel Survey, to analyse saving behaviour in Britain. One objective is to test the precautionary saving hypothesis, according to which households save to self-insure against uncertainty. Our results show that in accordance with this hypothesis, various measures of uncertainty based on earnings variability have a statistically significant effect on households' saving decisions. Moreover, in accordance with the life cycle model, households save more if they expect their financial situation to deteriorate.

Keywords: Precautionary saving; uncertainty; earnings variability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D91 E21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-12-21
Note: Received: 15 June 1999/Accepted: 4 January 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00148/papers/1014004/10140619.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

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:spr:jopoec:v:14:y:2001:i:4:p:619-634

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().