Consumer expenditures and home production at retirement: new evidence from Germany

Melanie Lührmann

No 07-13, Papers from Sonderforschungsbreich 504

Abstract: This paper investigates consumer expenditures of German households pre- and post-retirement. The widely observed distinct drop in spending upon retirement entry poses an empirical puzzle since life cycle theory predicts smoothing of the marginal utility of consumption over time. As one explanation, I explore the role of home production as a substitute for consumer expenses. Taking a combined look at consumer expenditures and time use pre and post-retirement, I find a significant drop of about 17% of pre-retirement expenses at retirement which coincides with an increase in time spent on home production of an additional 33% per day.

Keywords: Consumer Demand; Time Use; Retirement; Life Cycle Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D13 D91 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2554/1/dp07_13.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany (2010)
Journal Article: Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany (2010)
Working Paper: Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement - New Evidence from Germany (2007)
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:mnh:spaper:2554

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from Sonderforschungsbreich 504 Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Katharina Rautenberg ().