The Money Value of a Man

Mark Huggett and Greg Kaplan

No 1474, Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies.

Abstract: This paper posits a notion of the value of an individual's human capital and the associated return on human capital. These concepts are examined using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset returns. We find that (1) the value of human capital is far below the value implied by discounting earnings at the risk-free rate, (2) mean human capital returns exceed stock returns early in life and decline with age, (3) the stock component of the value of human capital is smaller than the bond component at all ages and (4) human capital returns and stock returns have a small positive correlation over the working lifetime.

Keywords: Value of Human Capital; Return on Human Capital; Idiosyncratic and Aggregate Risk; Incomplete Markets; Heterogeneous Agents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 E21 G12 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/238kaplan.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Money Value of a Man (2012)
Working Paper: The Money Value of a Man (2012)
Working Paper: The Money Value of a Man (2012)
Working Paper: The Money Value of a Man (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:cepsud:238

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