The Life-Cycle Hypothesis and the Consumption Behavior of the Elderly
The Life-Cycle Hypothesis and the Consumption Behavior of the Elderly
复制标题
生命周期假说与老年人的消费行为
DOI：
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发表时间：
1982
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
M. Taussig
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Danziger;J. Gaag;E. Smolensky;M. Taussig
生命周期假说（LCHO）基于这样一个常识性观念：家庭不会仅仅根据当前的收入和财富来做出储蓄或不储蓄的决定，还会考虑到他们预期的未来情况并受到过去经历的影响。特别是，由于人们可以预见到退休时收入会大幅下降，因此他们在年轻时储蓄，退休后储蓄，以或多或少地维持以前的生活水平。本文提供了关于收入和消费的新数据，这些数据比之前研究中使用的数据更适合测试 LCHO。然后我们研究了老年人和非老年人的平均消费倾向，并表明他们与 LCHO 的不一致之处。 LCHO 预测，在给定的收入水平上，老年人不储蓄，或者至少他们的平均消费倾向明显高于非老年人。事实上，我们发现了强有力的相反证据；也就是说，老年人不仅在退休期间不吝惜为自己的消费提供资金，而且在消费品和服务上的支出比所有收入水平的非老年人都少（储蓄多得多）。此外，在一定的收入水平下，年龄最大的老年人储蓄最多。在测试了一些试图挽救 LCHO 的调整后，我们对观察到的老年人平均消费倾向较高提出了其他解释。
The life-cycle hypothesis (LCHO) is based on the common-sense idea that households do not make saving or dis saving decisions solely on the basis of their current income and wealth, but that they also take into account their expected future circumstances and are affected by their past experience. In particular, because people can anticipate that their incomes will fall sharply when they retire, they save when younger and dissave after retirement so as to maintain, more or less, their previous standards of living. This paper presents new data on income and consumption that are more appropriate for testing the LCHO than the data used in previous studies. Then we examine the average propensities to consume of the elderly and nonelderly and show how they do not accord with the LCHO. The LCHO predicts that the elderly dissave, or at least that they have a significantly higher average propensity to consume, at a given level of income, than the nonelderly. In fact, we found strong evidence to the contrary; i.e., the elderly not only do not dissave to finance their consumption during retirement, they spend less on consumption goods and services (save significantly more) than the nonelderly at all levels of income. Moreover, the oldest of the elderly save the most at given levels of income. After testing some adjustments that attempt to salvage the LCHO, we suggest alternative explanations for the observed higher average propensities to consume of the elderly.