The pleasures of life are worth nothing if one is not alive to experience them. Through the twentieth century in the United States and other high-income countries, growth in real incomes was accompanied by a historically unprecedented decline in mortality rates that caused life expectancy at...

For thirty years it has been accepted that consumption is smooth because permanent income is smoother than measured income. (This paper considers the evidence for the contrary position, that permanent income is in fact less smooth than measured income, so that the smoothness of consumption...