IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10860.html

Life-Cycle Asset Accumulation and Allocation in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Milligan

Abstract

This paper documents the life-cycle patterns of household portfolios in Canada, and investigates several hypotheses about asset accumulation and allocation. Inferences are drawn from the 1999 Survey of Financial Security, with some comparisons to earlier wealth surveys from 1977 and 1984. I find cross-sectional evidence for asset decumulation at older ages when annuitized assets like pension wealth are included in the analysis. I also find that the portfolio share of financial assets increases sharply with age, while indicators of risk tolerance appear to decrease. This is consistent with families desiring more liquid and less risky assets as they age.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Milligan, 2004. "Life-Cycle Asset Accumulation and Allocation in Canada," NBER Working Papers 10860, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10860
    Note: AG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10860.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Katchova, Ani L., 2005. "A Comparison of Farm and Nonfarm Households," 2005 Agricultural and Rural Finance Markets in Transition, October 3-4, 2005, Minneapolis, Minnesota 132757, Regional Research Committee NC-1014: Agricultural and Rural Finance Markets in Transition.
    2. Whelan, Stephen & Atalay, Kadir & Hayward, Richard Donald, 2018. "Asset portfolio retirement decisions: the role of the tax and transfer system," SocArXiv akj8w, Center for Open Science.
    3. repec:osf:socarx:akj8w_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Isik U. Zeytinoglu & Margaret Denton, 2006. "Satisfied Workers, Retained Workers: Effects of Work and Work Environment on Homecare Workers' Job Satisfaction, Stress, Physical Health, and Retention," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 166, McMaster University.
    5. Stephen Birch & George Kephart & Gail Tomblin-Murphy & Linda O'Brien-Pallas & Rob Alder & Adrian MacKenzie, 2007. "Health human resources planning and the production of health: Development of an extended analytical framework for needs-based health human resources planning," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 168, McMaster University.
    6. Keane, M.P. & Thorp, S., 2016. "Complex Decision Making," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 661-709, Elsevier.
    7. Li, Zeguang & Huang, Yuanbiao & Hou, Keqiang, 2024. "Impacts of population aging on bank loan portfolios: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    8. Livio Di Matteo, 2016. "Wealth Distribution and the Canadian Middle Class: Historical Evidence and Policy Implications," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 42(2), pages 132-151, June.
    9. Courtney Coile & Kevin Milligan, 2009. "How Household Portfolios Evolve After Retirement: The Effect Of Aging And Health Shocks," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 226-248, June.
    10. Davies, James B. & Yu, Xiaoyu, 2013. "Impacts of Cyclical Downturns on the Third Pillar of the RIS and Policy Responses," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2013-20, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 29 Apr 2013.
    11. Katchova, Ani L., 2006. "The Economic Well-Being of Farm and Nonfarm Households: Evidence from Two National Surveys," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21401, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Charles M. Beach, 2016. "Changing income inequality: A distributional paradigm for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 1229-1292, November.
    13. Sule Alan, 2004. "Precautionary Wealth and Portfolio Allocation: Evidence from Canadian Microdata," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 117, McMaster University.
    14. Anthony Asher & Ramona Meyricke & Susan Thorp & Shang Wu, 2017. "Age pensioner decumulation: Responses to incentives, uncertainty and family need," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 42(4), pages 583-607, November.
    15. Huang, Huaxiong & Milevsky, Moshe A., 2016. "Longevity risk and retirement income tax efficiency: A location spending rate puzzle," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 50-62.
    16. Daniel Béland, 2006. "What Ownership Society: Debating Housing and Social Security Reform in the United States," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 150, McMaster University.
    17. Richard Ochmann, 2014. "Differential income taxation and household asset allocation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(8), pages 880-894, March.
    18. Michael P. Keane & Susan Thorp, 2016. "Complex Decision Making: The Roles of Cognitive Limitations, Cognitive Decline and Ageing," Economics Papers 2016-W10, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    19. Margaret Denton & Linda Boos, 2007. "Gender Inequality in the Wealth of Older Canadians," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 169, McMaster University.
    20. Martin Gervais & Manish Pandey, 2008. "Who Cares About Mortgage Interest Deductibility?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(1), pages 1-24, March.
    21. Nicole Kapelle & Sergi Vidal, 2022. "Heterogeneity in Family Life Course Patterns and Intra-Cohort Wealth Disparities in Late Working Age," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(1), pages 59-92, March.
    22. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Hildebrand, Vincent A., 2008. "The Asset Portfolios of Native-Born and Foreign-Born Households," IZA Discussion Papers 3304, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    23. Kevin Milligan, 2008. "The Evolution of Elderly Poverty in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 79-94, November.
    24. Anders, Sven M., 2010. "Ageing And Consumption – The Impact Of Demographic Change On Food Expenditure Patterns," 115th Joint EAAE/AAEA Seminar, September 15-17, 2010, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany 116442, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    25. Tammy Schirle, 2008. "Why Have the Labor Force Participation Rates of Older Men Increased since the Mid-1990s?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 549-594, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:10860. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.