This paper analyses how spouses in older couples react to `shocks' or `surprises' in their partner's labour income using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-2004. Wives' labour supply proves to be much more sensitive to shocks than husbands'. After a divorce or separation, wives...

The duration of spells of lone motherhood has important consequences for the economic well being of the members of such families and the cost of social programs. We use a large sample of linked income tax records to estimate a competing risk model of the impact of welfare benefits, language...

The family investment hypothesis predicts that credit-constrained immigrant families adopt a household strategy for financing post-migration human capital investment in which the “primary worker” engages in investment activities and the other partner undertakes labor market activities which...

The paper provides an analysis of the economic circumstances of Canadian cohorts in older phases of the life cycle. It begins by discussing the definition of "old" and the case for an upward revision of the traditional age-65 definition. It then goes on to consider changes in patterns of labour...

Do Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) increase savings? It is unclear whether they are largely "savings-creating" (i.e. generate new savings) or are largely "savings-diverting" (i.e. the repository for shifted existing assets or for savings that would have been made without the plans)....

We study women aged 51-75 who live alone and are not married over the period 1969-1993 using national samples from The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and The Family Expenditure Survey (FAMEX). We examine Income and Expenditure Patterns over the period and find that: there have been...

While it is well known that demand elasticities calculated at the macro level will in general differ from those calculated at the micro level because of aggregation effects there remain the questions of how large the effects are, and how they vary with the degree of nonuniformity in the income...

Starting with a theoretical QUAIDS model at the micro level, an approximate aggregation is developed that allows the model to be applied to time series at the macro level (The approximated aggregation holds for a "representative" consumer with utility equal to the harmonic mean of the individual...

The paper provides an analysis of the economic circumstances of Canadian cohorts in older phases of the life cycle. It begins by discussing the definition of "old" and the case for an upward revision of the traditional age-65 definition. It then goes on to consider changes in patterns of labour...

The family investment hypothesis that credit-constrained immigrant families adopt a household strategy for financing post-migration human capital investment in which the partner with albour market comparative advantage engages ininvestment activities and the other partner undertakes labor market...