Are Americans Saving
Are Americans Saving
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美国人储蓄吗
DOI：
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Surachai Khitatrakun
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Scholz;Ananth Seshadri;Surachai Khitatrakun
本文研究了美国人为退休储蓄的最佳程度。我们评估最优性的标准来自一个生命周期模型，该模型结合了不确定的寿命、不可保险的收入和医疗费用、累进税、政府转移支付以及来自丰富家庭数据的养老金和社会保障福利函数。我们解决了每个家庭从死亡到开始年龄的决策问题，然后使用决策规则结合收入历史来预测1992年的财富。我们的研究是第一次对每个家庭的财富预测进行比较，这些预测来自一个生命周期模型，该模型结合了全国代表性样本的收入历史。基于健康和退休研究数据的结果是惊人的，我们发现该模型能够解释1992年财富横截面变化的80%以上。只有不到20%的家庭的财富低于他们的最佳目标，而那些储蓄不足的家庭的财富赤字通常很小。
This paper examines the degree to which Americans are saving optimally for retirement. Our standard for assessing optimality comes from a life-cycle model that incorporates uncertain lifetimes, uninsurable earnings and medical expenses, progressive taxation, government transfers, and pension and social security benefit functions derived from rich household data. We solve every household''s decision problem from death to starting age and then use the decision rules in conjunction with earnings histories to make predictions about wealth in 1992. Ours is the first study to compare, household by household, wealth predictions that arise from a life-cycle model that incorporates earnings histories for a nationally representative sample. The results, based on data from the Health and Retirement Study, are striking we find that the model is capable of accounting for more than 80 percent of the 1992 cross-sectional variation in wealth. Fewer than 20 percent of households have less wealth than their optimal targets, and the wealth deficit of those who are undersaving is generally small.