In this paper, we evaluate two survey innovations aimed at improving income measurement. These innovations are (1) integrating the question sequences for income and wealth which may elicit more accurate estimates of income from capital than has been true in the past, and (2) changes in the...

This paper summarizes the principal facts about wealth inequality and how it has been changing during the last fifteen years. A very sharp rise in the inequality in household wealth has taken place at least since the mid-1980s. I first examine the relation between wealth and income by...

In this paper, we attempt to explain differences between the US and UK household wealth distributions, with an emphasis on the quite different porfolios held in stock and housing equities in the two countries. As a proportion of their total wealth, British households hold relatively small...

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. We estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the purchase of...

Using a unique set of household-level panel data, we estimate the effect of capital gains on saving by asset type, controlling for observable and unobservable household-specific fixed effects. The results suggest that the decline in the personal saving rate since 1984 is largely due to the...

In this paper, we model gender differences in cognitive ability in China using a new sample of middle-aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), CHARLS respondents are 45 years and older and are nationally representative of the Chinese...

Taxpayer effects are a central part of the total economic costs and benefits of immigration, but they have not received much study. These effects are the additional or lower taxes paid by native-born households due to the difference between tax revenues paid and benefits received by immigrant...