IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v80y2025i5p2739-2787.html

Household Portfolios and Retirement Saving over the Life Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • JONATHAN A. PARKER
  • ANTOINETTE SCHOAR
  • ALLISON COLE
  • DUNCAN SIMESTER

Abstract

Using account‐level data on millions of U.S. middle‐class investors over 2006 to 2018, we characterize the share of investable wealth that they hold in the stock market over their working lives. Relative to the 1990s, this share has both risen by 10% and become age‐dependent. The Pension Protection Act (PPA)—which allowed target date funds (TDFs) to be default options in retirement plans—played an important role: younger (older) workers starting at a firm after TDFs became the default option post‐PPA invested more (less) in stocks, in line with the TDF glidepath. In contrast, contribution rates changed little following the PPA.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan A. Parker & Antoinette Schoar & Allison Cole & Duncan Simester, 2025. "Household Portfolios and Retirement Saving over the Life Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 80(5), pages 2739-2787, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:80:y:2025:i:5:p:2739-2787
    DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13473
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.13473
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jofi.13473?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Weber & Bernardo Candia & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2023. "Do You Even Crypto, Bro? Cryptocurrencies in Household Finance," NBER Working Papers 31284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marta Cota, 2023. "Extrapolative Income Expectations and Retirement Savings," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp751, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    3. Gomes, Francisco & Haliassos, Michael & Ramadorai, Tarun, 2026. "New frontiers in household finance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 138280, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Ding Ding & Xiang Fang & Bryan Hardy & Karen Lewis, 2026. "Global pension asset allocations and debt markets," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 172.
    5. Wang, Hao & Siu, Tak Kuen & Wang, Ning & Wang, Rongming, 2025. "Utility maximization of household with information learning and health shocks," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).
    6. Li, Mingzhe, 2025. "A Theory of Portfolio Choice for Heterogeneous Investors," MPRA Paper 126642, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Oct 2025.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

    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:bla:jfinan:v:80:y:2025:i:5:p:2739-2787. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afaaaea.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.