Life-Cycle inequality: blacks and whites differentials in life expectancy, savings, income, and consumption

Giacomo De Giorgi, Luca Gambetti and Costanza Naguib

Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft

Abstract: Life expectancy for Blacks is about 8 year shorter than for Whites. A shorter life expectancy, in line with the theoretical prediction of a simple model, determines a much lower amount of savings and wealth accumulation and therefore a lower degree of insurance. This, in turn, contributes to persistent racial differentials in life-cycle consumption. Starting from the same position in the consumption distribution Blacks end up in a lower percentile than Whites after a few decades. This is particularly marked for those Blacks who start at the top of the consumption distribution, where Whites are much more per- sistent. We document these facts using 40 years of PSID data (1981-2017).

Keywords: Consumption; Income; Earnings persistence; quintile transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C3 D12 E21 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-ias and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp2103.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: LIFE-CYCLE INEQUALITY: BLACKS AND WHITES DIFFERENTIALS IN LIFE EXPECTANCY, SAVINGS, INCOME, AND CONSUMPTION (2020)
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:ube:dpvwib:dp2103

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Franz Koelliker ().