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Household Finance over the Life-Cycle: What does Education Contribute?

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  • Russell Cooper
  • Guozhong Zhu

Abstract

This paper studies household financial choices: why are these decisions dependent on the education level of the household? A life-cycle model is constructed to understand a rich set of facts about decisions of households with different levels of educational attainment regarding stock market participation, the stock share in wealth, the stock adjustment rate and the wealth-income ratio. Model parameters, including preferences, the cost of stock market participation and portfolio adjustment costs, are estimated to match the financial decisions of different education groups. Based on the estimated model, education affects household finance mainly through increased average income. The estimation also finds evidence that higher educational attainment is associated with a lower stock market entry cost and a larger discount factor. Education specific differences in income risks, medical expenses, mortality risks and the life-cycle pattern of income explain relatively little of the observed differences in household financial choices.

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  • Russell Cooper & Guozhong Zhu, 2014. "Household Finance over the Life-Cycle: What does Education Contribute?," NBER Working Papers 20684, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20684
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    2. Sandra E Black & Paul J Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2018. "Learning to Take Risks? The Effect of Education on Risk-Taking in Financial Markets," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 951-975.
    3. Elminejad, Ali & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana, 2022. "Relative Risk Aversion: A Meta-Analysis," MetaArXiv b8uhe, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ray Boshara & William R. Emmons & Bryan J. Noeth, 2015. "The Demographics of Wealth - How Age, Education and Race Separate Thrivers from Strugglers in Today's Economy. Essay No. 2: The Role of Education," Demographics of Wealth, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue 2, pages 1-28.
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    6. Aleksandra Kolasa, 2017. "Life Cycle Income and Consumption Patterns in Poland," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 9(2), pages 137-172, June.
    7. Michaelides, Alexander & Zhang, Yuxin, 2022. "Life-cycle portfolio choice with imperfect predictors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    8. Andreas Ek & Gunes Gokmen & Kaveh Majlesi, 2022. "Cultural Origins of Investment Behavior," Monash Economics Working Papers 2022-16, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    9. E. Black, Sandra & J. Devereux, Paul & Lundborg, Etter & Majlesi, Kaveh, 2016. "No. 2015/2 :Learning to Take Risks? The Effects of Education on Risk-Taking in Finacial Markets," Knut Wicksell Working Paper Series 2015/2, Lund University, Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies.
    10. Manuel Rupprecht, 2020. "Income and wealth of euro area households in times of ultra-loose monetary policy: stylised facts from new national and financial accounts data," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 281-302, May.
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    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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