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Life insurance and household consumption

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Author Info
Jay H. Hong
Jose-Victor Rios-Rull

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Abstract

In this paper, we use data of life insurance holdings by age, sex, and marital status to infer how individuals value consumption in different demographic stages. Essentially, we use revealed preference to estimate equivalence scales and altruism simultaneously in the context of a fully specified model with agents facing U.S. demographic features and with access to savings markets and life insurance markets. Our findings indicate that individuals are very caring for their dependents, that there are large economies of scale in consumption, that children are costly but wives with children produce a lot of goods in the home and that while females seem to have some form of habits created by marriage, men do not. These findings contrast sharply with the standard notions of equivalence scales.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in its series Working Papers with number 04-10.

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Date of creation: 2004
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:04-10

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Keywords: Insurance

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  4. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2003. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Some Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," Levine's Bibliography 506439000000000304, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith, Jr., . "Income and Wealth Heterogeneity, Portfolio Choice, and Equilibrium Asset Returns," GSIA Working Papers 1997-45, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
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  6. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz, 2004. "Consumption Inequality and Intra-Household Allocations," Working Papers 1019, Queen's University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Virginia Sanchez-Marcos & Orazio Attanasio & Hamish Low, 2004. "Explaining Changes in Female Labour Supply in a Life-Cycle Model," 2004 Meeting Papers 492, Society for Economic Dynamics.
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  11. Matthew S. Chambers & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2004. "Husbands Might Really Be That Cheap," 2004 Meeting Papers 146, Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. B. Douglas Bernheim & Lorenzo Forni & Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2001. "The mismatch between life insurance holdings and financial vulnerabilities: evidence from the Health and Retirement Survey," Working Paper 0109, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. [Downloadable!]
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  20. Browning, Martin, 1992. "Children and Household Economic Behavior," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1434-75, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz, 2005. "Consumption Inequality and Intra-Household Allocations," Labor and Demography 0504001, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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