This paper examines the wealth of successive birth cohorts using data from the 1989-2001 Surveys of Consumer Finances, with two central results. First, older households (aged 55-64, 65-74 or 75-84) in 2001 had more wealth than similarly aged households in 1989, but younger households did not....

The patterns and determinants of household wealth accumulation have long been of interest to economists. Using the 1989 and 2016 Surveys of Consumer Finance, we examine the determinants of changes in mean and median wealth of households of given ages across different birth cohorts. While the...

This paper provides a new econometric specification and new evidence on the impact of 401(k) plans on household wealth. We allow the impact of 401(k)s to vary over both time and earnings groups. Our specification--motivated by a variety of theoretical considerations and data...

Households acquire wealth from two sources: they save out of income they have earned, and they receive transfers from other people. The first method of wealth accumulation goes under the name of life-cycle saving, in which people save during their working lives and dissave after retirement; the...