IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sifrwp/0073.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Origins of Savings Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Cronqvist, Henrik

    (Claremont McKenna College)

  • Siegel, Stephan

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

What are the origins of individual savings behavior? Using data on identical and fraternal twins matched with data on their savings behavior, we find that an individual's savings propensity is governed by both genetic predispositions, social transmission from parents to their children, and gene-environment interplay where certain environments moderate genetic influences. Genetic variation explains about 35 percent of the variation in savings rates across individuals, and this genetic effect is stronger in less constraining, high socioeconomic status environments. Parent-child transmission influences savings for young individuals and those who grew up in a family environment with less competition for parental resources. Individual-specific life experiences is a very important explanation for behavior in the savings domain, and strongest in urban communities. In a world progressing rapidly towards individual retirement savings autonomy, understanding the origins of individuals' savings behavior are of key importance to economists as well as policy makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Cronqvist, Henrik & Siegel, Stephan, 2010. "The Origins of Savings Behavior," SIFR Research Report Series 73, Institute for Financial Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:sifrwp:0073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sifr.org/pdfs/sifr-wp73.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Savings; Consumption; Behavioral Genetics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    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:hhs:sifrwp:0073. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Anki Helmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sifrrse.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.