Consumption Insurance Against Wage Risk: Family Labor Supply and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation

Chunzan Wu and Dirk Krueger

No 2019-072, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: We show that a calibrated life-cycle two-earner household model with endogenous labor supply can rationalize the extent of consumption insurance against shocks to male and female wages, as estimated empirically by Blundell, Pistaferri, and Saporta-Eksten (2016) in U.S. data. In the model, 35% of male and 18% of female permanent wage shocks pass through to consumption, compared to the empirical estimates of 32% and 19%: Most of the consumption insurance against permanent male wage shocks is provided through the presence and labor supply response of the female earner. Abstracting from this private intra-household income insurance mechanism strongly biases upward the welfare losses from idiosyncratic wage risk as well as the desired extent of public insurance through progressive income taxation. Relative to the standard one-earner life cycle model, the optimal degree of tax progressivity is significantly lower and the welfare gains from implementing the optimal system are cut roughly in half.

Keywords: household model; male wages; female wages; income insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 E20 H21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-ias, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Note: M
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Wu_Kru ... gainst-wage-risk.pdf First version, September 22, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Consumption Insurance against Wage Risk: Family Labor Supply and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation (2021)
Working Paper: Consumption Insurance Against Wage Risk: Family Labor Supply and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation (2019)
Working Paper: Consumption Insurance Against Wage Risk: Family Labor Supply and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation (2019)
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