IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuieca/2014_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Life-Cycle Consumption and Children

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas H. Jørgensen

    (Copenhagen University)

Abstract

I show that conventional estimators based on the consumption Euler equation, extensively used in studies of intertemporal consumption behavior, produce inconsistent estimates of the effect of children on consumption if potentially binding credit constraints are ignored. As a more constructive contribution, I supply a tractable approach to obtaining bounds on the effect of children and a structural estimation strategy when households face constraints. Finally, I estimate the effect of children on consumption using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the US and high quality Danish administrative register data. Results suggest that children does not affect household consumption in the same magnitude previously assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2014. "Life-Cycle Consumption and Children," CAM Working Papers 2014_02, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics.
    • Handle: RePEc:kud:kuieca:2014_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ku.dk/cam/wp0910/CAMwp2_2014.pdf/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rust, John, 1987. "Optimal Replacement of GMC Bus Engines: An Empirical Model of Harold Zurcher," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 999-1033, September.
    2. Jérôme Adda & Christian Dustmann & Katrien Stevens, 2017. "The Career Costs of Children," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 293-337.
    3. Richard Blundell & Monica Costa Dias & Costas Meghir & Jonathan Shaw, 2016. "Female Labor Supply, Human Capital, and Welfare Reform," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1705-1753, September.
    4. Richard Blundell & Martin Browning & Costas Meghir, 1994. "Consumer Demand and the Life-Cycle Allocation of Household Expenditures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(1), pages 57-80.
    5. Attanasio, Orazio P, et al, 1999. "Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 17(1), pages 22-35, January.
    6. Deaton, Angus, 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1221-1248, September.
    7. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1995. "Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1121-1157, December.
    8. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    9. Cagetti, Marco, 2003. "Wealth Accumulation over the Life Cycle and Precautionary Savings," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 21(3), pages 339-353, July.
    10. Banks, James & Blundell, Richard & Preston, Ian, 1994. "Life-cycle expenditure allocations and the consumption costs of children," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 1391-1410, August.
    11. Attanasio, Orazio P & Browning, Martin, 1995. "Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1118-1137, December.
    12. Carroll, Christopher D., 2006. "The method of endogenous gridpoints for solving dynamic stochastic optimization problems," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 312-320, June.
    13. Sule Alan & Orazio Attanasio & Martin Browning, 2009. "Estimating Euler equations with noisy data: two exact GMM estimators," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 309-324, March.
    14. Christopher D. Carroll, 1992. "The Buffer-Stock Theory of Saving: Some Macroeconomic Evidence," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(2), pages 61-156.
    15. Thurow, Lester C, 1969. "The Optimum Lifetime Distribution of Consumption Expenditures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 324-330, June.
    16. Bick, Alexander & Choi, Sekyu, 2013. "Revisiting the effect of household size on consumption over the life-cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2998-3011.
    17. Martin Browning & Mette Ejrnæs, 2009. "Consumption and Children," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 93-111, February.
    18. Jay H. Hong & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2012. "Life Insurance and Household Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3701-3730, December.
    19. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Ian Preston, 2008. "Consumption Inequality and Partial Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1887-1921, December.
    20. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    21. Martin Browning & S¯ren Leth-Petersen, 2003. "Imputing consumption from income and wealth information," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(488), pages 282-301, June.
    22. David A. Love, 2010. "The Effects of Marital Status and Children on Savings and Portfolio Choice," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 385-432, January.
    23. Irvine, Ian J, 1978. "Pitfalls in the Estimation of Optimal Lifetime Consumption Patterns," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 301-309, July.
    24. Browning, Martin & Deaton, Angus & Irish, Margaret, 1985. "A Profitable Approach to Labor Supply and Commodity Demands over the Life-Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 503-543, May.
    25. Daniel Ackerberg & John Geweke & Jinyong Hahn, 2009. "Comments on "Convergence Properties of the Likelihood of Computed Dynamic Models"," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(6), pages 2009-2017, November.
    26. Heckman, James J, 1974. "Life Cycle Consumption and Labor Supply: An Explanation of the Relationship Between Income and Consumption Over the Life Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(1), pages 188-194, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2016. "Euler equation estimation: Children and credit constraints," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), pages 935-968, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2017. "Life-Cycle Consumption and Children: Evidence from a Structural Estimation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(5), pages 717-746, October.
    2. Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2016. "Euler equation estimation: Children and credit constraints," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), pages 935-968, November.
    3. Jesus Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2007. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 552-565, August.
    4. Agnes Kovacs & Hamish Low & Patrick Moran, 2021. "Estimating Temptation And Commitment Over The Life Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 101-139, February.
    5. Bick, Alexander & Choi, Sekyu, 2013. "Revisiting the effect of household size on consumption over the life-cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2998-3011.
    6. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2001. "The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    7. Mette Ejrnæs & Thomas H. Jørgensen, 2020. "Family planning in a life‐cycle model with income risk," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 567-586, August.
    8. Bram De Rock & Bart Capéau, 2015. "The implications of household size and children for life-cycle saving," Working Paper Research 286, National Bank of Belgium.
    9. Orazio P. Attanasio & Hamish Low, 2004. "Estimating Euler Equations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 405-435, April.
    10. Hamish Low & Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1432-1467, September.
    11. Antoine Bozio & Guy Laroque & Cormac O’Dea, 2017. "Discount rate heterogeneity among older households: a puzzle?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 647-680, April.
    12. Julian Thimme, 2017. "Intertemporal Substitution In Consumption: A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 226-257, February.
    13. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    14. Apps, Patricia & Rees, Ray, 2004. "Life Cycle Time Allocation and Saving in an Imperfect Capital Market," IZA Discussion Papers 1036, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Hamish Low, 2005. "Self-Insurance in a Life-Cycle Model of Labor Supply and Savings," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(4), pages 945-975, October.
    16. Orazio Attanasio, 1997. "Consumption and saving behaviour: modelling recent trends," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 23-47, February.
    17. Ivan Vidangos, 2009. "Household welfare, precautionary saving, and social insurance under multiple sources of risk," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-14, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Daria Pignalosa, 2019. "On the role of the utility function in the estimation of preference parameters," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 793-820, November.
    19. David A. Love, 2010. "The Effects of Marital Status and Children on Savings and Portfolio Choice," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 385-432, January.
    20. Hugo Benitez-Silva, 2000. "A Dynamic Model Of Labor Supply, Consumption/Saving, And Annuity Decisions Under Uncertainty," Computing in Economics and Finance 2000 128, Society for Computational Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption; Children; Life Cycle; Credit Constraints; Structural Estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kud:kuieca:2014_02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Hoffmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/camkudk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.