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Saving for Retirement: Household Bargaining and Household Net Worth

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Author Info
Shelly J. Lundberg (University of Washington)
Jennifer Ward-Batts (University of Michigan)

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Abstract

Traditional economic models treat the household as a single individual, and do not allow for separate preferences of and possible conflicts of interest between husbands and wives. Since wives are typically younger than their husbands and life expectancy for women exceeds that for men, wives may prefer to save more for retirement than do their husbands. This suggests that households in which wives have greater relative bargaining power may accumulate greater net worth as they approach retirement. Most empirical models of net worth in the literature do not include characteristics of both spouses. We present a more complete unitary model of household net worth and find, among couples in the first wave of the Health and Retirement Survey, that the characteristics of both husband and wife are determinants of net worth. We explore the importance of bargaining in marriages of older couples by examining the empirical relationship between their net worth and factors such as relative control over current income sources, relative age, and relative education. We find some evidence that low relative education of wives is associated with low net worth.

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Paper provided by University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center in its series Working Papers with number wp004.

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Length: 21 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2000
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Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp004

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References listed on IDEAS
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. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, 1992. "Collective Labor Supply and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 437-67, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. B. Douglas Bernheim & Jonathan Skinner & Steven Weinberg, 1997. "What Accounts for the Variation in Retirement Wealth Among U.S. Households?," NBER Working Papers 6227, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Michael Baker, 1999. "The Retirement Behavior of Married Couples: Evidence From the Spouse's Allowance," Working Papers baker-99-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Browning, Martin, 1995. "Saving and the intra-household distribution of income: an empirical investigation," Ricerche Economiche, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 277-292, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Michael D. Hurd, 1990. "The Joint Retirement Decision of Husbands and Wives," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in the Economics of Aging, pages 231-258 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Bagnoli, Mark, 1993. "Courtship as a Waiting Game," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 185-202, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Lundberg, Shelly & Pollak, Robert A, 1993. "Separate Spheres Bargaining and the Marriage Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(6), pages 988-1010, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Richard Disney & Paul Johnson & Gary Stears, 1998. "Asset wealth and asset decumulation among households in the Retirement Survey," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 153-174, May. [Downloadable!]
  9. Blau, David M, 1998. "Labor Force Dynamics of Older Married Couples," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(3), pages 595-629, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Shelly Lundberg & Elaina Rose, 1999. "The Determinants of Specialization within Marriage," Working Papers UWEC-2005-07, University of Washington, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas L. Steinmeier, 1998. "Effects of Pensions on Saving: Analysis with Data from the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Working Papers 6681, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Michael D. Hurd, 1999. "Mortality Risk and Consumption by Couples," NBER Working Papers 7048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. James P. Smith, 2004. "Racial and Ethnic Differences in Wealth in the Health and Retirement Study," Labor and Demography 0408011, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Browning, Martin & Francois Bourguignon & Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Valerie Lechene, 1994. "Income and Outcomes: A Structural Model of Intrahousehold Allocation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1067-96, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Banks, James & Blundell, Richard & Tanner, Sarah, 1998. "Is There a Retirement-Savings Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 769-88, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Michael D. Hurd & Kathleen McGarry, 1993. "Evaluation of Subjective Probability Distributions in the HRS," NBER Working Papers 4560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Martin Browning, 1994. "The Saving Behaviour of a Two Person Household," Department of Economics Working Papers 1994-01, McMaster University. [Downloadable!]
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  18. Lundberg, Shelly & Pollak, Robert A, 1994. "Noncooperative Bargaining Models of Marriage," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 132-37, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Lundberg, Shelly & Pollak, Robert A, 1996. "Bargaining and Distribution in Marriage," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 139-58, Fall. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, 1988. "Rational Household Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(1), pages 63-90, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Blau, David M., 1997. "Social security and the labor supply of older married couples," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 373-418, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(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. Felix Freyland, 2005. "Household Composition and Savings: An Overview," MEA discussion paper series 05087, Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA), University of Mannheim. [Downloadable!]
  2. Saku Aura, . "Does the balance of power within a family matter? The case of the Retirement Equity Act," Working Papers 202, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Saku Aura, 2003. "Uncommitted Couples: Some Efficiency and Policy Implications of Marital Bargaining," Microeconomics 0304002, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Jennifer Ward-Batts, 2001. "Health, Wealth and Gender: Do Health Shocks of Husbands and Wives Have Different Impacts on Household Wealth?," Working Papers wp016, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
  5. John Gibson & Trinh Le & Grant Scobie, 2004. "Women’s Retirement Incomes in New Zealand: A Household Bargaining Approach," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/22, New Zealand Treasury. [Downloadable!]
  6. Findeis, Jill L., 2002. "Subjective Equilibrium Theory of the Farm Household: Theory Revisited and New Directions," Workshop on the Farm Household-Firm Unit: Its Importance in Agriculture and Implications for Statistics, April 12-13, 2002, Wye Campus,Imperial College 15723, International Agricultural Policy Reform and Adjustment Project (IAPRAP). [Downloadable!]
  7. Felix Freyland, 2005. "Household Composition and Savings: An Overview," MEA discussion paper series 05087, Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA), University of Mannheim. [Downloadable!]
  8. Marieka Klawitter, 2008. "The effects of sexual orientation and marital status on how couples hold their money," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 423-446, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Freyland, Felix, 2004. "Household Composition and Savings: An Overview," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 04-69, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim & Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim. [Downloadable!]
  10. Natalia Zhivan & Steven A. Sass & Margarita Sapozhnikov & Kelly Haverstick, 2008. "An "Elastic" Earliest Eligibility Age for Social Security," Issues in Brief ib2008-8-2, Center for Retirement Research, revised Feb 2008. [Downloadable!]
  11. John Gibson & Trinh Le & Grant Scobie, 2006. "Household bargaining over wealth and the adequacy of women's retirement incomes in New Zealand," Feminist Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(1-2), pages 221-246, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Angela C. Lyons & Tansel Yilmazer, 2004. "How Does Marriage Affect the Allocation of Assets in Women's Defined Contribution Plans?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College 2004-28, Center for Retirement Research. [Downloadable!]
  13. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Vincent A. Hildebrand, 2008. "The Asset Portfolios of Native-born and Foreign-born Households," CEPR Discussion Papers 567, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  14. Jungmin Lee & Mark L. Pocock, 2007. "Intrahousehold allocation of financial resources: evidence from South Korean individual bank accounts," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 41-58, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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