Recent research has shown that 'rich' households save at much higher rates than others (see Carroll (2000); Dynan Skinner and Zeldes (1996); Gentry and Hubbard (1998); Huggett (1996); Quadrini (1999)) This paper documents another large difference between the rich and the rest of the population:...

Most private giving between living generations takes the form of tied transfers, such as help with housing downpayments. We argue that parents provide help with downpayments in order to encourage the production of grandchildren, and that such a subsidization emanates from the demonstration...

The size of the average American household has fallen dramatically - from six in 1850 to three in 2000. To explain this decline we model households as collections of roommates who share the costs of household public goods. If private goods are more income elastic than public goods, as we...

To help shed light on the implications of intergenerational transfers for wealth inequality, this paper uses data for Japan and the United States to examine whether individuals who receive intergenerational transfers from their parents are more likely to leave bequests to their children than...

We provide new evidence from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Decennial Census of Housing that the expenditure share on housing is constant over time and across U.S. metropolitan areas (MSA). Consistent with this observation, we consider a basic model in which identical households with Cobb-Douglas...

The negative correlation between female employment and fertility in industrialized nations has weakened since the 1960s, particularly in the United States. We suggest that the continuing influx of low-skilled immigrants has led to a substantial reduction in the trade-off between work and...

Using 1995 - 2006 Current Population Survey and 1970 - 2000 Census data, we study the intergenerational transmission of fertility, human capital and work orientation of immigrants to their US-born children. We find that second-generation women's fertility and labor supply are significantly...