Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde and Dirk Krueger

No 9382, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper uses a seminonparametric model and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to estimate life cycle profiles of consumption, controlling for demographics, cohort and time e.ects. In addition to documenting profiles for total and nondurable consumption, we devote special attention to the age expenditure pattern for consumer durables. We find hump-shaped paths over the life cycle for total, for nondurable and for durable expenditures. Changes in household size account for roughly half of these humps. The other half remains unaccounted for by the standard complete markets life cycle model. Our results imply that households do not smooth consumption over their lifetimes. This is especially true for services from consumer durables. Bootstrap simulations suggest that our empirical estimates are tight and sensitivity analysis indicates that the computed profiles are robust to a large number of different specifications.

JEL-codes: D12 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge
Note: EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Published as Jesus Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2007. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 552-565, 06.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9382.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data (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:nbr:nberwo:9382

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9382

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().