We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice. The approach allows for changes in income risk over the life-cycle and with the business cycle. It requires only repeated cross-section data and can allow for mixtures of...

We discuss recent developments in the literature that studies how the dynamics of earnings and wages affect consumption choices over the life cycle. We start by analyzing the theoretical impact of income changes on consumptionhighlighting the role of persistence, information, size and...