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Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Saving Behavior

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  • Dal Borgo Mariela

Abstract

Using data of households approaching retirement in the U.S., I find that the Whites' median saving rates are 9 percentage points larger than the Mexican Americans' rates (ethnic gap) and than the African Americans' rates (racial gap). Two-thirds of each gap correspond to changes in asset prices and a third to households' active decisions. Quantile decompositions show that differences in income and education explain most of the active saving gaps. This implies that wealth inequality is not attributable to differences in the distributions of active saving rates conditional on socio-economic characteristics. When retirement assets are included, the racial but not the ethnic gap in total savings disappears. The results suggest that reducing disparities in income, education and pension savings would help to reduce wealth inequality.

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  • Dal Borgo Mariela, 2018. "Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Saving Behavior," Working Papers 2018-02, Banco de México.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdm:wpaper:2018-02
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    Cited by:

    1. Luke Petach & Daniele Tavani, 2021. "Differential Rates of Return and Racial Wealth Inequality," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 115-165, September.
    2. Christian E. Weller & Connor Maxwell & Danyelle Solomon, 2021. "Simulating How Large Policy Proposals Affect the Black-White Wealth Gap," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 196-213, September.
    3. Ravi Kanbur, 2021. "Sustainable Development Goals and the Study of Economic Inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(1), pages 3-11, March.
    4. Kai Yuan Kuan & Mark R. Cullen & Sepideh Modrek, 2015. "Racial Disparities in Savings Behavior for a Continuously Employed Cohort," NBER Working Papers 20937, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    African Americans; Mexican Americans; saving rates; wealth inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

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