Using panel data for a sample of households in Utah from 1850 to 1900 we find income and wealth age profiles that are … a relationship between age-income and age-wealth profiles that is consistent with a life-cycle model of consumption … given a concave and peaked age-income profile: households accumulate and then begin to draw down wealth holdings, the age-wealth …

income ( the rich') have higher lifetime saving rates (Dynan, Skinner, and Zeldes (1996); Lillard and Karoly (1997)). The … wealth accumulation is to finance future consumption, either their own or that of heirs. The paper concludes that the … simplest model that explains the relevant facts is one in which either consumers regard the accumulation of wealth as an end in …

This paper examines how labor income volatility and social security benefits can influence lifecycle household … portfolios. We examine how much the individual optimally saves and where, taking into account liquid financial wealth and … annuities, and stocks as well as bonds. Higher labor income uncertainty and lower old-age benefits boost demand for stable …

distribution of retirement wealth and the expected utility of wealth at retirement. It considers both rules that allocate a … as the worker ages. The analysis simulates retirement wealth using asset returns that are drawn from the historical … return distribution. The results suggest that the distribution of retirement wealth associated with typical lifecycle …

conclude that, among the elderly single households in our sample, about four-fifths of their net wealth will be bequeathed and …

retirement income provisions. Building on extensions of the life cycle model, we derive hypotheses on the implications of … institutional differences for wealth accumulation and portfolio composition. Examples of implications are that the ratio of net … worth and gross wealth should be highest in Italy, that Dutch households should hold the lowest wealth levels at retirement …

Why do similar households end up with very different levels of wealth? We show that differences in the attitudes and … these differences and to measure each household's 'propensity to plan.' We show that those with a higher such propensity … spend more time developing financial plans, and that this shift in planning effort is associated with increased wealth. The …

This paper provides new evidence on the decomposition of aggregate household wealth into life-cycle and transfer wealth …. Using the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances, it finds that transfer wealth accounts for approximately one-fifth to one …-quarter of aggregate wealth, suggesting a larger role for life-cycle savings than some previous estimates. Despite the smaller …