This paper explores the economic status of the elderly in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. It has been widely believed that reduced earnings of ageing workers in these periods were fully supplemented by increased earnings of children. The patterns of individual consumption...

This study estimates what fraction of the rise in family income inequality in the United States between 1968 and 2000 is accounted for by the change in each of the family income components, such as wages, employment, hours of work of family heads and spouses, family structure, and other incomes....