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Dynastic Precautionary Savings

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  • Corina Boar

Abstract

This paper provides evidence that parents accumulate savings to insure their children against income risk. I refer to this behavior as dynastic precautionary saving and quantify its extent using matched parent-child pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and exploiting variation in income risk across age, industries and occupations. I then build a model of altruistically linked overlapping generations, in which parents and children interact strategically, that is quantitatively consistent with the empirical evidence. I argue that strategic interactions are important for generating the observed dynastic precautionary behavior and use the model to show this component of household savings is quantitatively important for wealth accumulation, intergenerational transfers and consumption insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Corina Boar, 2020. "Dynastic Precautionary Savings," NBER Working Papers 26635, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26635
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    Cited by:

    1. Marla Ripoll, 2021. "The Patterns of Parental Intervivos Transfers to Adult Children," Working Paper 7144, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    2. Agustín Díaz Casanueva, 2024. "The Role of Parental Altruism in Parents Consumption, College Financial Support, and Outcomes in Higher Education," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 1005, Central Bank of Chile.
    3. Yang, Siqiang & Ripoll, Marla, 2023. "Financial transfers from parents to adult children," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 286-303.
    4. Elin Halvorsen & Serdar Ozkan & Sergio Salgado, 2022. "Earnings dynamics and its intergenerational transmission: Evidence from Norway," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(4), pages 1707-1746, November.
    5. Barczyk, Daniel & Kredler, Matthias, 2021. "Blast from the past: The altruism model is richer than you think," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    6. Corina Boar, 2021. "Dynastic Precautionary Savings [“Deconstructing Life Cycle Expenditure”]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(6), pages 2735-2765.

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    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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